Science Learning Packet BIO B: Population Ecology, Lesson 3

science learning activities for SPS students during the COVID-19 school closure.

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If you have difficulty accessing the material or have any questions, please contact your student’s teacher. 3/27/2020

How to use this PowerPoint • Work at your own pace. Your health and your family come first. • If possible, you might find it helpful to go through activities at the same time as a peer. Then you can communicate through text, email, or a call if you have questions or to share ideas. • You might find it helpful to have a piece of scrap paper and a pencil or pen to record questions or 3.1 Who are the stakeholders and what is ideas. their relationship with the orca population? • Read through the slides one at a time. Take your time to explore the images and any links. • If you come across something you don’t understand, make a note of which slide you are on and come back to it after you go through the whole PowerPoint. If you are still confused, feel free to Reading and Analysis email your teacher with a question. You could also ask someone in your household or reach out to a peer through text, email, or a call. • When you finish, consider sharing what you learned with someone in your household or a friend through text, email, or a call. Explaining your thinking will help you to retain and make sense of the information.

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Goals Who are the stakeholders and what is their relationship with the orca After reviewing this PowerPoint, you should be able to: population? Choose at least two of the following articles to 1) Identify several stakeholders with an interest in orca populations. read and analyze. You might choose to split these up with friends and summarize for each 2) Describe how at least two stakeholders are connected to orca other over the phone or text. populations, including their concerns and priorities. 1. The Smithsonian – Pacific Northwest Orca Population hits 30-year low 2. Associated Press/Seattle Times – Gov. Inslee Signs Range of Bills Aimed at Helping Orcas 3. The Guardian – This Land is your Land 4. Washington State Governor, Southern Resident Killer Whales Policy Brief

Photo Credit: Seattle Times

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Stakeholder Article Notes (use provided sheet) Check Your Understanding 1. The Smithsonian – 2. Associated 3. The Guardian – 4. Washington State Pacific Northwest Press/Seattle Times - This Land is your Land Governor, Southern 1) Identify several stakeholders with an interest in orca populations. Orca Population hits Gov. Inslee Signs Resident Killer Whales 30-year low Range of Bills Aimed Policy Brief 2) Describe how at least two stakeholders are connected to orca populations, at Helping Orcas including their concerns and priorities. Share your learning with someone Summary in your household or call a friend. What’s Next? Stakeholders: People involved 1) Compare your Stakeholder Article Notes with the provided key. Add ideas to your notes. Questions 2) Consider reading “OPTIONAL Hostile Waters Seattle Times Article” to learn more about what’s happening with Southern Resident Orcas. 3) Make an entry in your Learning Tracking Tool titled “3.1 Who Are the Stakeholders?”

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2 Name: ______Period: ______Date: ______3.1 Who are the stakeholders and what is their relationship with the orca population? Stakeholder Article Notes

1. The Smithsonian – Pacific 2. Associated Press/Seattle 3. The Guardian – This Land is 4. Washington State Governor, Northwest Orca Population hits Times - Gov. Inslee Signs Range your Land Southern Resident Killer Whales 30-year low of Bills Aimed at Helping Orcas Policy Brief

Summary

Stakeholders: People involved

Questions

Gov. Inslee signs range of bills aimed at helping orcas Seattle Times, May 8, 2019 By GENE JOHNSON

The Associated Press

Washington Gov. Jay Inslee, surrounded by lawmakers, tribal members and others, signs the first of several bills designed to help the Pacific... (Rachel La Corte / The Associated Press)

SEATTLE (AP) — Washington Gov. Jay Inslee signed several bills Wednesday designed to help the Pacific Northwest’s endangered orcas, measures that he said gave him hope the species might be saved.

The measures include requiring more oil shipments near the San Juan Islands to have tugboat escorts to prevent spills, allowing anglers to catch more walleye and bass that prey on young salmon, and giving state agencies the authority to ban toxic chemicals in consumer goods.

Other important parts include improving the state’s ability to enforce permit requirements for work that hardens shorelines, such as by installing bulkheads near homes, and making vessels stay farther away from orcas and go slower when they’re near them.

“These bills are helping to improve the ecosystems that sustain both salmon and orcas, quiet the waters in which the orcas hunt and provide them more prey,” Inslee said as he signed the bills in Olympia. “While there will be more to do next session, these bills give me hope that we can protect these iconic species for decades to come.”

The legislation grew out of recommendations made by Inslee’s orca recovery task force last fall. The orcas that return every year to the waters between Washington and British Columbia are struggling against toxins that accumulate in their blubber, vessel noise that interferes with their hunting, and, most seriously, a dearth of chinook salmon, their preferred prey. There are just 75 of the killer whales left, and researchers say they’re on the verge of extinction.

In December, Inslee, who is running for the Democratic nomination for president, proposed what he described as a “herculean effort” — and $1.1 billion in spending — to help the whales. Much of the money was to go toward protecting and restoring salmon habitat.

The Legislature directed about $50 million to some important salmon-restoration efforts, including a dam removal on the Nooksack River and flood-plain work along the Dungeness and Cedar rivers. Lawmakers agreed to pay $750,000 to begin planning for what might happen if four huge dams on the Snake River were breached; conservationists say getting rid of the dams is a crucial step toward bringing back salmon and orcas alike, though it faces steep political opposition in eastern Washington.

Lawmakers didn’t give Inslee everything he wanted, though, especially when it came to money. They agreed to spend only $100 million — about one-third of what Inslee asked for — to comply with a federal court order to replace more than 400 culverts that block fish passage by 2030. That makes it unlikely the state will meet the court’s deadline.

Conservationists nevertheless celebrated Tuesday. Mindy Roberts, Puget Sound director of the Washington Environmental Council, called the bills Inslee signed “the biggest wins for Puget Sound recovery for over a decade.”

Activists and researchers have long known that the threats to the whales are urgent, she said, but it took the deaths of several — and the apparent mourning of one mother, named Tahlequah, who carried her dead calf on her head for 17 days last summer — to penetrate the public consciousness.

“The visibility of the plight of the orcas — that’s what got people to act,” Roberts said. “People were talking about it at grocery stores. I heard people talking about it at a wedding — and these were not your typical activists.”

The bills include:

—Senate Bill 5135 , which gives the Ecology Department the ability to ban certain chemicals, including PCBs and PFAS, in consumer products such as carpets, personal care products, building materials and electronics. Researchers say the chemicals can accumulate in the blubber of whales, posing health risks as the whales burn through their fat as they search for scarce salmon. Toxic-Free Future, a nonprofit advocacy group, said the bill gives Washington the nation’s strongest policy regulating toxic chemicals in products.

the number of oil tankers in the area by a factor of Pacific Northwest Orca seven. When construction begins in August, excessive Population Hits 30-Year-Low noise and potential oil spills will add to existing threats posed by noise and boat traffic, according to Lynda V. Declining salmon population, pollution and noise Mapes of the Seattle Times. disturbance pose largest threats to the killer whales’ Although declining salmon numbers, pollution and noise survival disturbance pose the most immediate threats to the No calves have been born over the past three years, and whales' survival, Millman reports that other factors may the current orca population is only 75 (Wikimedia be at play. Scientists are rarely able to test dead orcas, Commons) as their bodies sink or wash up in remote areas, so much of their plight remains unknown. Robbins writes By Meilan Solly/ SMITHSONIAN.COM / JULY 10, 2018 that anthroponeses, or diseases passed from humans to Killer whales are one of the iconic sights of the Pacific animals, are one concern: Orcas are consistently Northwest, but future generations may not have the exposed to airborne pathogens that their immune chance to appreciate them. Their population has just hit systems may not equipped to fend off. a 30-year low, according to an annual census. "If there were a highly virulent virus to come through The Southern Resident killer whale population is just here it would take out a large part of the population one population of the black-and-white whales, which and totally stop recovery efforts," orca researcher worldwide are estimated to number in the tens of Joseph K. Gaydos tells Robbins. thousands. But the southern resident whales, whose Another potential explanation is overarching issues numbers hover below 100, are considered within the mammals' ecosytem. As Robbins notes, a endangered by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. mass of extremely warm water known as "The Blob" has According to the annual census, the whales' situation is raised water temperatures across the Pacific by as much more dire than ever: No calves have been born over the as six degrees. past three years, and the current population is only 75. Southern Resident whales are typically spotted around The New York Times’ Jim Robbins reports that under the Salish Sea, an inland body of water that connects normal circumstances, four or five calves would be born British Columbia to Washington’s Puget Sound. Their each year. In 2015, the Seattle Post-Intelligencer’s Zosha migration pattern follows that of the Chinook salmon, Millman adds, nine calves were born, although three, Millman notes, but has become more erratic with including one named Sonic, have since died. changes in the salmon population.

Robbins writes that the whales are “essentially starving” The sharp decline in the killer whale population has as their main food source, the Chinook salmon, sparked numerous conservation efforts, including a experiences a decline in population. Orcas typically eat March executive order signed by Washington Governor 30 of these 40-inch-long fish per day, but shrinking Jay Inslee directing state agencies to find ways to numbers have forced the whales to expend more support the whales (proposed solutions include energy hunting smaller prey. decreased boat traffic, improved clean-up of toxins and renewed efforts to revitalize the Chinook salmon The salmon itself poses a threat to the whales, as population), and an increase in studies designed to chemicals and pesticides accumulate as the fish feed pinpoint the sources of these rising mortality rates. and eventually end up stored in the orcas’ fat. These toxins suppress the whales' immune systems, leaving “The orca will not survive unless all of us in the state of them vulnerable to disease, and can affect the females' Washington somehow make a commitment to their ability to reproduce. survival," Inslee said when signing the order. Speaking of both the whales and the Chinook salmon, he said, An additional cause for concern is the planned 600-mile "the impacts of letting these two species disappear expansion of the TransMountain Pipeline, which runs would be felt for generations." through the orcas’ habitat and is expected to multiply Policy Brief

December 2018 (updated January 2019)

SAVING THE SOUTHERN RESIDENT ORCA

Gov. Inslee puts forward unprecedented funding package “We are undertaking that will support recovery efforts a Herculean effort The Pacific Northwest’s iconic Southern Resident orcas are struggling to save these iconic to survive. More than a century of development and human activity creatures. It will take along the Puget Sound and the ravages of climate change are largely action at every level to blame. Significant efforts and investments are needed throughout of the environment the region to prevent Southern Resident orcas from falling closer to extinction. Gov. Inslee’s 2019–21 operating, capital and transportation across our entire budgets include a broad array of investments to build toward a state. We need to thriving and resilient orca population. restore the ecosystem to one that sustains Background orca, salmon and Southern Resident orcas travel in three groups — the J, K and L pods — from central California to Southeast Alaska. But they spend most of quality of life for all the year in the Salish Sea and along the outer coasts of Washington and Washingtonians.” Vancouver Island. Gov. Jay Inslee

www.governor.wa.gov 1 Southern Resident orca population fell to Southern Resident killer whale population fell to 74 in 2018, lowest count in 30 years 74 in 2018, lowest count in 30 years

110 Southern resident 100 orca population Federal endangered listing 90 24% decline since 1995 80 State endangered listing 70

Population End60 of captures falls to 74 for aquaria

50 1976 1981 1986 1991 1996 2001 2006 2011 2016

Source: Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife, Nov. 2018 Source: Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife, Nov. 2018

In 1973, just 66 whales were identified in the first environment. And disturbance from noise and vessel census of Southern Resident orcas. In the mid-1970s, traffic makes it harder for the orcas to find and catch after orca captures for marine parks were halted, food. the population began to recover and eventually Broader ecological threats such as climate change returned to nearly 100 whales by 1995. But over the and ocean acidification have compounded the next decade, the Southern Resident orca population plight of Southern Resident orcas. Despite additional declined again and, by 2005, these orcas had been protections and recovery efforts, the Southern declared an endangered species by both the United Resident orca population continues to decline — States and Canada. falling this year to 74 whales, the lowest number in At the time, three major threats to Southern more than 30 years. Resident orcas were identified. The region’s In March 2018, Gov. Jay Inslee issued an executive populations of Chinook salmon — the whales’ order directing state agencies to take immediate primary source of food — have been greatly actions to help the struggling orca population and diminished by habitat loss, hydropower established the Southern Resident Killer Whale development and historic over-harvest. Southern Task Force to develop a long-term orca recovery Resident orcas and their prey are exposed to ever- plan. The task force comprises nearly 50 members increasing levels of toxic pollutants in the marine representing a wide range of sectors, including state

2 agencies, the Legislature and state, tribal, federal and local governments, as well as private sector and nonprofit organizations. Lack of prey This fall, after months of deliberation and public Southern Resident orcas prey primarily on Chinook feedback that included 18,000 written public salmon. Productive and protected habitat is critical comments, the task force issued a report with to support sustainable populations of both naturally dozens of recommendations to alleviate the major spawning salmon as well as young hatchery salmon. threats to Southern Resident orcas. The task force Fully functioning salmon habitat includes uplands set an initial target of increasing the Southern and riparian habitat as well as cool, clear water. Resident population to 84 over the next decade. To achieve these, Gov. Inslee provides nearly $363 The task force’s recommendations support four million in the capital budget for salmon recovery, overarching goals to benefit orcas: culvert removal, water quality and water supply • Increasing Chinook salmon abundance projects that will expand and improve salmon habitat across the state. The transportation budget • Decreasing disturbance and other risks posed includes $291 million for the Washington State by vessel traffic and noise Department of Transportation to correct fish • Reducing exposure to toxic pollutants for orcas passage barriers on state highways and to meet the and their prey requirements of the U.S. District Court injunction requiring removal of fish passage barriers in most of • Ensuring adequate funding, information and Western Washington. accountability measures are in place to support effective recovery efforts In the operating budget, Inslee includes $6.2 million to boost enforcement and improve compliance with state and federal habitat protection laws, including Gov. Inslee details unprecedented the Hydraulic Permit Act, Shoreline Management investments in orca recovery Act and Clean Water Act, as well as to implement Supporting Southern Resident orca recovery efforts legislation improving compliance with the Hydraulics is one of the top priorities of Gov. Inslee’s 2019–21 Act. budgets. His operating, capital and transportation budgets for the next biennium include a combined The governor’s operating and capital budgets $1.1 billion in investments to build toward a thriving provide nearly $19 million to create incentives and resilient orca population. that encourage voluntary actions by landowners to protect habitat through the Washington State Besides helping orcas, these investments will have Conservation Commission. significant benefits for the region’s entire ecosystem and complement efforts to recover salmon, tackle Meanwhile, salmon hatcheries can play an climate change, improve water quality and more. important role in increasing prey abundance for These investments are based on actions most likely Southern Resident orcas in the near term (three to to yield strong benefits for Southern Residents orcas 10 years) as increasing natural Chinook stocks will over the short term while setting up a sustainable, take more time. Increases in hatchery production data-driven path for longer-term efforts.

3 must be consistent with sustainable fisheries Snake River dams. The budget provides $750,000 management principles and natural stock recovery for the task force to lead this stakeholder process. under the Endangered Species Act. Nearly $12 While that process is underway, the governor is million is included in the operating budget to directing the Department of Ecology to take the maximize existing capacity at Department of Fish steps necessary to allow for increasing spill of water and Wildlife hatcheries to produce an additional over the dams. Increased spill will speed travel of 24.2 million salmon smolts, which will result in smolts out to the ocean and help cool the water. To approximately 186,000 additional adult returns. increase spill, the Department of Ecology needs to Capital investments totaling $75.7 million are raise the allowable amount of dissolved oxygen gas. provided to make improvements to keep the Ecology has taken the first steps to modifying state hatchery system operating and meet water quality water quality standards for greater spill; $580,000 is standards. included in the operating budget to complete this The recently renegotiated Pacific Salmon Treaty process. between the United States and Canada will also In addition, Inslee’s operating budget includes play an important part in restoring Chinook stocks $524,000 to examine issues related to increasing the in the Puget Sound. Gov. Inslee strongly supports Chinook population by reestablishing salmon runs full funding by Congress for the habitat restoration above Chief Joseph Dam on the Columbia River and projects, increased hatchery production and filling $743,000 to improve monitoring and management monitoring gaps the treaty calls for. This is likely to of forage fish that provide the food source for result in at least $43 million in new federal funding Chinook. for Washington state projects and programs. Seals and sea lions (pinnipeds), along with other Salmon in the Columbia and Snake River systems predators such as fish and birds, impact the must travel over 14 dams as they migrate as smolts abundance of Chinook and other salmon that to the ocean and then return as adults. Breaching Southern Resident orcas eat. Thanks in large part of the four Lower Snake River dams has been to the adoption of the Marine Mammal Protection raised by many as a way to increase Chinook for Act in 1972, the population of pinnipeds along the Southern Resident orcas. The Columbia River system West Coast has increased dramatically. However, is undergoing a federal environmental impact pinniped predation is especially a problem at “pinch statement review on the operation of the dams. points” such as dams or other artificial structures Breaching of the four Lower Snake River dams is where salmon congregate. The operating budget one option being evaluated as part of that federal includes $2.4 million to collect additional population process. The governor’s Southern Resident task information and develop management options force recommended establishing a stakeholder for pinnipeds in Puget Sound and to increase process to discuss the associated economic and management actions in the Columbia River. social impacts — as well as mitigation costs — of the potential breaching or removal of the Lower

4 GO SLOW 400 YARDS – 1/2 nautical mile (1,013 YARDS) Disturbance from vessel traffic NO GO ZONE 400 YARDS To decrease disturbance to Southern Resident Increase No Go Zone from 200 yards to orcas, the governor proposes a permanent increase 400 yards in the distance all vessels must maintain from the Federal and state orcas to 400 yards and creates an unprecedented whale-watching regulations permanent “go-slow” zone for all vessels within half a nautical mile of Southern Resident orcas. NO GO ZONE 400 YARDS Scientists recommend that slowing down boats and providing a large zone where boats are GO SLOW 400 YARDS – 1/2 nautical mile absent are both necessary to quiet the waters (1,013 YARDS) near orcas. The governor is also requiring a temporary, three-year suspension on all Southern Gov. Inslee proposes increasing the distance boats must stay Resident whale watching. This would be reviewed away from Southern Resident orcas from the current federal rules by the Washington State Department of Fish and of 200 yards to 400 yards. A go slow zone — 7 knots per hour or less — for boats viewing orcas would be established from 400 Wildlife after the three-year period to evaluate yards to 1/2 nautical mile (1,013 yards) from the whales. the effectiveness of the suspension. In addition, a limited-entry whale watching system for commercial vessels and kayaks would be established through of a catastrophic oil spill, the governor supports legislation to limit and manage future interactions legislation and $751,000 to fund rule-making that with orcas in state waters. The budget includes $1.1 will require tug escorts for barges transporting million for the Washington Department of Fish and oil through high risk areas of Puget Sound. Wildlife to enforce these requirements. Currently only the larger oil tankers have this safety requirement. The frequent daily transits of Washington state ferries are a significant contributor to underwater noise in Puget Sound. The ferries are also a major source of greenhouse gases. The transportation budget provides $117 million to begin converting two of the state’s Jumbo Mark II ferries from diesel Toxic contaminants to hybrid-electric and to begin constructing two Toxic contaminants in water and sediments are new hybrid-electric ferries. Besides reducing noise harmful to the marine food web supporting and greenhouse gas emissions, the new and Southern Resident orcas. Besides reducing the modified vessels will lower operating costs by an survival of salmon and other forage fish, these estimated $7 million a year in fuel once the charging toxics are also absorbed by orcas, which can disrupt stations are in place and the boats are running in full reproduction and suppresses their immune system. electric mode. To reduce this threat, the operating budget includes Oil spills represent a low-probability but high-impact $3 million to enhance local source control programs risk to Southern Resident orcas. To reduce the risk and $4.2 million to speed up the management

5 of toxics cleanups. To remove toxics already Science and support contaminating sediments, lands and structures, the Success in recovering Southern Resident orcas will operating budget includes $3.5 million to remove require additional science and monitoring to fill toxic creosote structures and the capital budget has data gaps, measure progress and improve recovery $57.8 million to clean up toxic sites, $51 million to efforts. The operating budget provides $1.4 million reduce and manage stormwater and $32 million to to monitor zooplankton and increase monitoring address contaminants from wastewater systems and of pollutants in marine waters and $3.5 million to other nonpoint sources. conduct research and modeling. Meanwhile, To prevent toxic chemicals from being used $1.3 million is included in the operating budget for in consumer products and then entering the state agencies to support overall recovery efforts environment where they pose a health risk to and consultant support for the second year of the people and the environment orcas rely on, the Governor’s Southern Resident Killer Whale Task operating budget includes $2.9 million to enhance Force. testing for toxics in products and $236,000 for reducing pharmaceuticals in wastewater. The operating and capital budgets provide $7.3 million to implement chemical action plans for preventing toxics from entering the environment.

Summary of orca recovery-related investments ($ in millions)

Lack of prey Operating budget – hatchery production, habitat law enforcement, pinniped management $36.6 Capital budget – habitat restoration projects $376.0 Capital budget – hatcheries $75.7 Transportation budget – culvert (fish passage barrier) replacement $296.0 Sub-total $784.3 Disturbance from vessel traffic Operating budget – enforcement, boater education $2.9 Transportation budget – electrify state ferries $117.0 Sub-total $119.9 Toxic contaminants Capital budget – toxics cleanup and stormwater $143.7 Operating budget – toxics prevention, chemical action plans $19.4 Sub-total $283.0 Science and support Operating budget $2.5 Total $1,069.8

6 This land is your land The Guardian by Levi Pulkkinen in San Juan Island, Washington Thu 25 Apr 2019 06.00 EDTLast modified on Thu 25 Apr 2019 13.18 EDT

A pod of orcas is starving to death. A tribe has a radical plan to feed them

The Lummi Nation is dropping live salmon into the sea in a last-ditch rescue effort: ‘We don’t have much time’

Bobbing on the gray-green waters west of Washington state’s San Juan Island, Sle-lh’x elten Jeremiah Julius lifted a Chinook salmon from a 200-gallon blue plastic fish box. He carried the gulping fish to the boat’s rail and slid it into the sea, where it lingered a moment, then disappeared in a silver flash. Lummi tribal members wait for the hereditary chief, Bill James, to speak It was a quietly radical act. following a ceremonial feeding of This sea once teemed with the giant salmon, which in turn sustained thriving the qwe ’lhol mechen, commonly pods of orca. Today wild Chinook fisheries are in decline, and the orcas are known as orcas, early this month on starving. Julius is the chairman of the Lummi Nation, a tribe pushing an Puget Sound, Washington. unorthodox policy. They are feeding salmon to the wild whales. Photograph by Grant Hindsley/The Guardian Numbering close to 100 two decades ago, the population of southern resident orca has dropped to just 75 as a result of pollution in their environment, ship noise that drowns out their sonic communication and hinders their hunting, and, most crucially, a paucity of wild Chinook. Older whales have been seen wasting away, miscarriages are on the rise, and infant orca born alive are not surviving to adulthood. Last year a mother whale, Tahlequah, carried her dead calf for two and a half weeks in a scene that sparked an international outcry.

The Lummi Nation has long shared a coast and culture with the whales, an orca community found only in the waters off Seattle and Vancouver known as the Salish Sea. The tribe’s members once lived on the shores of the San Juans, now dotted with quaint tourist towns, million-dollar vacation homes and resorts, and they see the whales as their relatives.

The fish slipped to the orca was both a prayer and a signal to the starving whales that the tribe would not sit back and watch them vanish.

Before the Chinook was returned to the water, a Lummi drummer sang the story of a great flood said to have brought the tribe to the islands. The Lummi consider themselves to be survivors of that long-ago flood; the survivor’s song is their nation’s anthem. But they worry they, the salmon and the orca will not survive the present disaster.

“The bottom line is the Salish Sea and the whales and the tribes need more salmon,” said Julius, the elected leader of the 6,500-member tribe. “We’re at the point now where we don’t have much time. We are possibly the last generation that can do anything about it.”

‘We see them as family’

Tribal members speak of a visceral connection to whales felt in day-to-day life and experienced through ceremony.

“It’s hard to explain because it is all in the [Lummi] language. Sometimes there are no words to explain how it is,” the hereditary Lummi chief, Tsi’li’xw Bill James, said. “This is the way we live our lives, which is different from how you live.”

By tradition, elders use song and ritual to reach out to the “longhouses under the water”, as they envision the orcas’ habitation, to offer the whales their blessings and listen for a reply. Totem poles are carved with the orca’s image, sometimes accompanied by a human rider as a symbol of rebirth. Tribal members talk of feeling the whales passing by, of a calling from their relatives. “We as Lummis learn pretty early on who our relations are, and we are taught that those are our relations under the waves,” said Squil-le- he-le Raynell Morris, a White House staffer during the Clinton presidency who returned to the Lummi reservation a decade ago.

“We see them as part of our family, part of our community.”

Back-to-back orca deaths over the summer hit the Lummi reservation hard, particularly the death of Tahlequah’s calf.

“She showed the world, ‘Look at what you did to my baby,’” said Tse-Sealth Jewell James, a Lummi master totem pole carver. Having lost two children of his own, the carver understood the orca’s instinct. “I look at the whale, and I say, ‘Yeah, I understand. You can’t just let them go.’”

The deaths invigorated state and federal efforts, such as limiting fishing and restricting ship traffic, to improve salmon and whale habitats. But the tribe and its supporters want more, and faster. Lummi leaders have since begun feeding orcas ceremonially, while calling for a large-scale feeding effort that could include salmon stations scattered around Top left: The Lummi Nation hereditary chief, Bill James. Top right: Puget Sound. The Lummi tribal leader Al Johnnie. Bottom left: Tony Hillaire, chief of staff of the Lummi Nation business council. Bottom right: The proposal would mark an unprecedented Lawrence Solomon, secretary of the Lummi business council. step. It has not received support from the Photographs by Grant Hindsley/The Guardian National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (Noaa), the leading federal agency tasked with protecting the orca. In the past, feeding programs have sustained terrestrial endangered species such as the Lawrence Solomon; Bill James; Jeremiah Julius, California condor, not migratory whales. Lummi tribal chairman; Tony Hillaire; and Al Noaa believes such efforts risk making the whales dependent on Johnnie finish the ceremonial feeding on the humans for their survival. Michael Milstein, a public affairs officer waters off Henry Island. Photograph by Grant for the agency’s fisheries division, praised the Lummi’s work on Hindsley/The Guardian habitat restoration but said direct feeding was not “a sustainable recovery strategy”.

Absent federal permission, the Lummi may move forward alone. For members such as Morris, there is no time to wait. “They are seeing their babies being born dead. They are seeing their babies die,” she said, speaking through tears. “And the matriarchs, the moms and grandmas, can’t fix it. So they’re calling out for our help.” Jeremiah Julius walks the beach following a feeding. Photograph by Grant Hindsley/The Guardian

‘A desperate, last-ditch effort’

The broader scientific community is split on the proposal. Julie Teel Simmonds, a senior attorney with the Center for Biological Diversity, says the orcas’ situation is so precarious that one event could wipe them out.

“A catastrophic oil spill in the sound. A particularly bad Chinook return,” Teel Simmonds said. “It really is now or never for these orcas … and that’s why we have to take every approach we have.”

Teel Simmonds noted that it was unclear whether orca could be fed, or if wild orca would hunt fish dropped for them, but did not object to the Lummi attempts.

“It is a desperate, last-ditch effort. We understand it,” she said. “We’re open to any possible solution that could help save these orcas.”

But Samuel Wasser, director of the University of Washington’s Center for Conservation Biology, described feeding as a “bad idea”. Wasser said the orca require a sustained supply of salmon, and a less toxic environment, if they are to survive.

“You can’t save these animals one whale at a time,” he said. “They are another example of an apex predator being decimated by human over-indulgence, which undoubtedly impacts ecosystem stability. As in many of these cases, we are doing too little too late.”

Standing on a half-moon gravel beach on tiny Henry Island just east of the Canadian border, eight Lummi gathered on a recent spring day to reach out to their relations under the waves. The gathering was part of a ritual to connect with the orca and learn, James said, where the Chinook should be delivered.

Hand drums sounded as the chief sang in the Lummi language. Flames from a driftwood fire lit the faces of two dark, wooden spirit boards making tight vertical circles in the hands of elders, their cheekbones smudged with red circles.

Later, on the feeding boat, chief James sat with a blanket on his lap. “We’re asking for the wellbeing for everything that lives in the Salish Sea, as you folks call it,” he said. “The greater society has to decide whether they’re going to help or not.” Name: ______KEY______Period: ______Date: ______3.1 Who are the stakeholders and what is their relationship with the orca population? Stakeholder Article Readings KEY

1. The Smithsonian – Pacific 2. Associated Press/Seattle 3. The Guardian – This 4. Washington State Governor, Northwest Orca Population hits 30- Times - Gov. Inslee Signs Range Land is your Land Southern Resident Killer Whales Policy year low of Bills Aimed at Helping Orcas Brief

Summary 30-year low due to loss of food – Gov. signs bill to protect orcas, Native American Southern Resident whale population goes salmon Dept. of Ecology will lead this community tries to up and down over last 30 years and hit a work. increase orca population low point last year. Getting regional and national by directly feeding salmon. attention, article suggests more Senate Bill 5135 will include a Orcas became an endangered species in The plan is to make this conservational efforts must be ban on specific chemicals from 2005 but this new action will add 1.1 action Puget Sound wide introduced to support population businesses, so it doesn’t pollute billion to support the orca population. but scientists at NOAA are the Puget sound. concerned that the orcas Main causes – low food supply, increase may become too in toxic pollutants and increase in noise dependent on humans. traffic.

Stakeholders: People in Washington State Dept of Ecology workers Lummi Nation Dept of Ecology People People causing noise pollution from People of Puget Sound NOAA Scientists People living near Dams involved ferries, boat traffic, etc. Communities where habitat is People of Puget Sound – specifically ferry Fishery industry restored/dam removal riders, or others who cause boat traffic

Businesses will need to stop Fishing Industry using chemicals.

Questions Questions will vary…. Questions will vary…. Questions will vary…. Questions will vary….

Ex. What is the best way to increase Ex. What laws were in place Ex. How much to salmon Ex. Where does the money come from? the fish population? before? How will dam removal eat? happen? Where would they get the salmon?

Hostile Waters: Orcas thrive in a land to the north. Why are Puget Sound's dying?

Seattle Times staff Published November 11, 2018 Story by Lynda V. Mapes | Photographs by Steve Ringman

BLACKFISH SOUND, QUEEN CHARLOTTE STRAIT, B.C.

Bigger and bigger, with a puff and a blow, the orca surfaces, supreme in his kingdom of green.

Poking a head above the waves, a northern resident orca is at home in his kingdom of green. The northern resident population has been growing at 2.2 percent a year on average for the past 40 years. (Steve Ringman/The Seattle Times)

Northern resident orcas like this one live primarily in the cleaner, quieter waters of northern Vancouver Island and Southeast Alaska, where there also are more fish to eat. They are the same animal as the southern residents that frequent Puget Sound, eating the same diet, and even sharing some of the same waters. They have similar family bonds and culture.

The difference between them is us.

The southern residents are struggling to survive amid waters influenced by more than 6 million people, between Vancouver and Seattle, with pollution, habitat degradation and fishery declines. The plight of the southern residents has become grimly familiar as they slide toward extinction, with three more deaths just last summer. Telling was the sad journey of J35, or Tahlequah, traveling more than 1,000 miles for at least 17 days, clinging to her dead calf, which lived only one half-hour.

Yet just to the north, the orca population has more than doubled to 309 whales since scientists started counting them in 1974, and has been growing ever since, at 2.2 percent per year on average.

For scientists seeking to better understand the southern residents’ troubles, the northern residents are like a control group, said Sheila Thornton, chief killer-whale biologist for the Department of Fisheries and Oceans Canada.

“Their environment has changed so quickly, over just two generations,” Thornton said of the southern residents. “To keep up with these changes is almost an impossible task. How do they survive in the environment we have created for them?”

The decline of the whales, a symbol of the Northwest, is also a warning, as climate change and development remake our region.

The northern residents live in not just a different place, but another world.

A remote land to the north

Paul Spong stuffs a pair of chainsaw ear muffs on his head to block out the racket as he pilots his boat to collect visitors arriving at OrcaLab, his remote, land-based whale research station on Hanson Island, on the northeast side of Vancouver Island.

OrcaLab grows on the shore of the island like a huckleberry bush sprawling from an old-growth stump: organic and nestled into its place. And what a place it is. It’s a vision of the way the lands and waters of Puget Sound used to be.

Pacific white-sided dolphins seem to fly as they skim the surface northeast of Vancouver Island. The environment of the northern residents is more like Puget Sound used to be. (Steve Ringman/The Seattle Times)

Behind the lab, a 1,000-year-old cedar reigns over woods in which the very light seems green. The ground underfoot is thick and soft with deep duff, and forest cloaks the land to the waterline. Beaches, never armored or walled off from the nourishing sea, are piled with driftwood and wrack.

On these remote islands of the Broughton Archipelago, bears turn over rocks, looking for crabs, and ravens gronk in the woods. The jade green, clear, clean water is alive with seabirds, humpbacks and dolphins. Bones picked clean and wedged between beach stones attest to a bounty of fish.

OrcaLab has been Spong’s listening post since 1970. What he wants to hear — and has obsessively recorded 24 hours a day, seven days a week during summer and fall all those decades — are the sounds of the northern resident whales that cruise the waters of Blackfish Sound and Johnstone Strait.

Called the side-by-side tribe by the Namgis First Nation, northern resident orcas have the same close family bonds and culture as southern residents. Families, led by the matriarchs of the clan, stay together for life. (Steve Ringman/The Seattle Times)

Leaning on a wooden rail of the deck overlooking the glassy water, Spong speaks softly of the life he and his wife, Helena Symonds, have lived here amid the whales.

Behind him, inside his lab, an ever-changing cadre of research volunteers monitors feeds from underwater cameras Spong has placed throughout the area over the years to non-invasively document the lives of passing whales. Hydrophones — underwater microphones — also monitor the water from a listening network Spong has established over about 50 square kilometers in the orcas’ core habitat. Live webcams also bring the wonder of this place to the world.

Robson Bight (Michael Bigg) Ecological Reserve includes a favorite beach of the orcas as well as an important salmon stream and the upland forest that protects it. (Courtesy of Explore.Org)

Among the first to understand the complex emotional lives and intelligence of orcas, Spong also was among the pioneers who insisted on a name change to orca from killer whale, to better reflect the nature of these animals that for so long were feared and maligned as random and vicious killers. Orcas are efficient and skilled hunters. But never in the wild has an orca been known to attack a human, even when captors took their young for aquariums.

Trained as a brain scientist, it was while working with captive whale Skana at the Vancouver Aquarium in 1967 that Spong discovered he was interacting with a complex mind. It wasn’t long before he spoke out against captivity, earning his employer’s displeasure. After leaving the aquarium, he quickly established OrcaLab. By now he has logged thousands of hours of orca sounds and images and remains even more convinced that humans share space with beings that have capacities we are only beginning to discover.

“They are so successful,” said Spong, reflecting on Orcinus orca, ruler of the seas and the top predator in every ocean of the world. They live in cooperative cultures and even in peace among different tribes of their own kind. In the North Pacific, northern and southern resident orcas, transient orcas — or Bigg’s killer whales — and a third type called offshores have worked out a sophisticated diplomacy, sharing space over a vast territory. While they will overlap in their hunting and travels, they mostly each keep to their distinct ecological niches.

The northern residents generally keep to northern Vancouver Island and Southeast Alaska, while the southern residents ply the trans-boundary waters of the Salish Sea between the U.S. and Canada and outer coast of Washington, Oregon and even California. The transients travel both places and the offshores typically keep to the outer continental shelf. The three types don’t interbreed, don’t share language, food or culture, and are not known to fight.

Specialization in diet might be one reason: The transients eat seals and other marine mammals; the offshores eat sharks, while the northern and southern residents eat fish, mostly chinook salmon.

Killer whales, the oceans' top predator

Killer whales are the most widely distributed whales in the world and found in every ocean. Three orca ecotypes reside in the waters of the northern Pacific Coast. While their ranges overlap, they are not known to interact, and each ecotype is genetically distinct.

The residents are unique in their family ties, stronger than among humans. Orca families stay together for life, with the offspring never leaving the day-in, day-out company of their family. They share food, hunt and travel together, and sleep alongside one another, moving slowly with the current at the surface of the water. Conscious breathers, unlike us, they must keep half their brain awake to keep breathing as they rest.

They are superheroes of the sea, traveling 75 miles a day and more, with bursts of speed up to 30 mph and capable of diving more than 3,000 feet.

Yet they are so much more than all business. The northern and southern residents are playful, athletic and extremely tactile, continually touching and interacting in the water, with babies tossed by their parents and rolled over their backs. Their social lives are rich. Males and females can mate year-round.

Spong shows underwater footage from cameras at Robson Bight (Michael Bigg) Ecological Reserve, set aside just for the whales. Here on beaches of round, smooth stones, they eagerly seek out their pleasures: The orcas slide through pellucid, aquamarine water, pressing the air in silvery bubbles from their lungs in order to sink low and scooch over the stones. They rub their bodies over the pebbles, seemingly just for the delight of it.

The sanctuary is visible from a remote OrcaLab observation outpost on Cracroft Point, with underwater cameras in fixed locations to serve as windows into the lives of the whales. A shack atop a tiny platform on the point is the base camp for volunteers who also document the comings and goings of the whales and the human activities around them.

Down the coast, more volunteers also are at work at the aptly named Eagle Eye Research Station. Reached with the help of a rope, climbed hand over hand up a steep cliff, volunteers here guard the reserve, established as a sanctuary just for killer whales in 1982 by the B.C. government. They keep an eye out for any boat — motorized or not — that might intrude on the whales’ peace and privacy, and they log whale sightings and boat activity. Marine wardens on patrol work to keep boaters the required 200-meter distance away from the whales outside the reserve, and guard the waters within it.

Volunteers on their tiny observation platform monitor the northern residents from the most remote outpost of OrcaLab, on Cracroft Point above Johnstone Strait. (Steve Ringman/The Seattle Times)

The southern residents have no such respite or sanctuary from human intrusion and noise. While they are the most studied whales in the world, and among the most endangered orcas, they contend with boat traffic and human intrusion even in their most critical foraging areas, such as the west side of San Juan Island.

The northern residents’ sanctuary, set aside for feeding, socializing and enjoying the rubbing beaches, isn’t perfect. Commercial fishermen are allowed into the sanctuary to pursue sockeye. And adjoining Johnstone Strait remains a major connecting waterway between the waters of Southeast Alaska and the Salish Sea.

Sure enough: A cruise ship suddenly comes into view, five stories high, blocking sight of the glittering waters of the strait. It seems spectacularly out of place, an emissary from the lands and waters to the south — where, amid millions of people, the southern residents try to live and cope.

Congested home waters

It was these hostile waters through which Tahlequah swam, carrying her sad burden day after day. She swam south of Vancouver, past the coal docks piled high and ghosting black dust into the water. She swam through busy shipping lanes in Haro Strait, amid oceangoing container ships and oil tankers towering over her. She swam through busy boat traffic, including commercial whale-watch boats that make millions of dollars every season. Vessel noise masks the sounds the orcas use to find their food, adding to their troubles.

She and her family contend with other threats to their survival too: toxics that seep into the food chain, then into whale mothers’ milk. A recent study predicted a global killer-whale population collapse because of polychlorinated biphenyls, or PCBs, in the orcas’ food chain. A group of toxic, man-made chemicals, PCBs were banned from manufacture in the U.S. in 1979, but are still ubiquitous in the environment.

Massive alteration and degradation of the Puget Sound ecosystem is pushing the southern resident orcas to extinction. (Steve Ringman/The Seattle Times)

PCBs were used around the world for decades, primarily to insulate and cool electrical equipment and prevent electrical fires. They were also used in hydraulic systems, lighting and cable insulation, paint, caulking, sealants, inks and lubricants. Today PCBs still leach, leak, dissipate into the atmosphere and contaminate runoff during rainfall.

Southern residents are at more grave risk of health effects from PCBs and other toxics than the northern orcas, the study found, because the southern residents live in more polluted waters.

Toxics also are more dangerous for them because they don’t have enough to eat. When they go hungry, orcas burn their fat, releasing toxics into their bloodstream. And too often the southern residents do go hungry because the chinook salmon they eat are threatened with extinction, just like them.

Tahlequah swam alone, her pod in hearing distance but not in sight. She swam slowly, perhaps with exhaustion, and her dives shortened in their arc as she worked to hold on to her calf. Despite the sunset light, glowing on the rocks in Swanson Channel on an evening in July, this was not that typical orca postcard photo, but the searing sight of an animal struggling to hang on in a battle with extinction.

The tiny dead calf born to J35, or Tahlequah, is seen in this July photo alongside Tahlequah’s head as the mother carries her for an eighth straight day. (Steve Ringman/The Seattle Times)

To be sure, the northern residents are still a threatened species, and have troubles of their own. But the southern residents always have had the short end of the stick, said Jared Towers, a killer-whale expert with Fisheries and Oceans Canada who has studied both populations.

Northern resident orcas have a far more diverse array of salmon runs from which to choose, including Washington- spawned chinook as those salmon mature and travel in northern waters. They pick them off before the southern residents ever get their chance.

But for thousands of years, the southern residents still thrived until their habitat and food supply were diminished.

The main limiting factors for the southern residents are the reduction of the quality of their habitat and inadequate food within their primary range, Towers said.

The misshapen head of J50, left, is a sign of starvation. She died in September. Meanwhile the northern residents, including the male at right, are growing in numbers. (Left image courtesy of Katy Foster, taken under NOAA permit 18786-03; Right photo by Steve Ringman/The Seattle Times)

The southern residents’ short end of the stick is getting shorter as they struggle in some of the most urban waters for their kind anywhere in the world. The southern residents today are critically endangered, with only 74 left.

Barry Thom, regional administrator for NOAA Fisheries West Coast Region, faced an angry crowd at a public hearing in Friday Harbor in September, after the southern residents’ terrible summer of losses. “I look at 2018, and I hope this is the low point,” Thom said. “The clock is running out on killer whale recovery, and it is heart-wrenching to see.”

In response, Gov. Jay Inslee has convened a task force on orca recovery, meeting now to devise recommendations due Nov. 16 for this legislative session. Whether those efforts will result in the far-reaching changes the orcas need — from cleaner water to quieter foraging and more chinook — is yet to be seen.

As winter looms, scientists’ drone photography shows several of the southern residents are looking thinner than they were at the start of their seasonal year in the Salish Sea — a bad way to start the leanest season of all.

There is hope in at least three pregnancies in the southern resident pods, J, K and L. However, that hope is fragile. Of 35 pregnancies among whales tracked by University of Washington scientists from 2007 to 2014, more than two-thirds failed to produce a live calf. And the losses were probably higher; not every pregnancy is detected. Struggling to survive in hostile waters, the southern residents have not successfully reproduced in three years.

To the north, life is so different; 10 new calves were born to orca families there just last year.

Lynda V. Mapes: 206-464-2515 or [email protected]; on Twitter: @LyndaVMapes. Lynda specializes in coverage of the environment, natural history, and Native American tribes.

CREDITS: Reporter: Lynda V. Mapes, Photographer: Steve Ringman, Project editor: Benjamin Woodard, Photo editor: Fred Nelson, Videographer: Ramon Dompor, Video editor: Lauren Frohne, Graphic artist: Emily M. Eng, Art director and developer: Frank Mina, Page designer: Rita Wong, Engagement: Sean Quinton, Gina Cole, Copy editor: Laura Gordon 3/27/2020

How to use this PowerPoint • Work at your own pace. Your health and your family come first. • If possible, you might find it helpful to go through activities at the same time as a peer. Then you can communicate through text, email, or a call if you have questions or to share ideas. • You might find it helpful to have a piece of scrap paper and a pencil or pen to record questions or 3.2 How have humans impacted the Orca ideas. environment? • Read through the slides one at a time. Take your time to explore the images and any links. • If you come across something you don’t understand, make a note of which slide you are on and come back to it after you go through the whole PowerPoint. If you are still confused, feel free to Notes and Discussion email your teacher with a question. You could also ask someone in your household or reach out to a peer through text, email, or a call. • When you finish, consider sharing what you learned with someone in your household or a friend through text, email, or a call. Explaining your thinking will help you to retain and make sense of the information.

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Goals

After reviewing this PowerPoint, you should be able to: 1) Identify a variety of impacts that humans have on ecosystems using the acronym “HIPPCO.” 2) Describe how several of those impacts directly affect species such as orca whales. 3) Describe how human impacts on ecosystems can result in the extinction of species. Human Impacts on the Environment

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How Humans Impact the Environment = HIPPCO Human Impact on the Environment – Notes

H – Habitat Destruction How Humans Impact Example from Notes Relationship to Orca Other ideas or Questions Environment population?

I – Introduction of Invasive Species H –

I – P – Pollution P – P – Population Growth (humans) P – C –

C – Climate Change O –

O – Overharvesting Use the “3.2 HIPPCO Note-taking Guide” to take notes on these ideas

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English Ivy in American West H is for Habitat Destruction I is for Invasive Species Habitat Destruction – happens when natural habitats Invasive Species – a species that spreads rapidly are no longer able to support the species native to across large areas. More, an invasive species is not that habitat due to human activities such as native to the specific location in which it is spreading deforestation, dredging rivers, bottom trawling in and can cause damage to the environment by Brown Tree Snake in Guam oceans and lakes, urbanization, filling wetlands, and reducing biodiversity and/or damage to the human harvesting fossil fuels. This destruction of ecosystems economy and/or human health. Himalayan Blackberry in the Pacific Northwest leave them unable to support native species, leading to their displacement and/or reduction of the More resources to review and explore invasive biodiversity of the ecosystem. species:

• Q13 FOX – Washington is home to more than Nutria in American West More resources to review and explore habitat 700 invasive species destruction: • TedEd– Invasive Species Burmese Python in Florida Everglades Zebra Mussels in the United States • National Wildlife Federation – Habitat Loss • National Wildlife Federation • Science Direct – Habitat Loss • NOAA – What is an invasive species • CK12.org – Habitat Destruction • National Geographic – Invasive Species 101 • PBS – Habitat Loss

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P is for Pollution Pollution in the bodies of organisms includes Bioaccumulation and Biomagnification Pollution – is the introduction and addition of contaminants (such as chemicals) into the natural environment that cause harmful and damaging effects leading to environmental change. Pollution can be Bioaccumulation Biomagnification caused by chemical substances, noise, heat, or light. • refers to the build-up of the • refers to the build-up in multiple The polluting substances (pollutants) can be caused by chemical in the body of one organisms. foreign substances/energies or by excess or organism inappropriate amounts of naturally occurring • requires movement up a food substances. • does not require that the animal chain (consumption) in order to be consumed occur More resources to review and explore pollution: • NASA – Climate Kids • National Institute of Health – Kids Health • National Geographic – Pollution • World Wildlife Fund – Pollution • NDRC – Air Pollution • NDRC – Water Pollution

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Pollution in the bodies of organisms includes P is for Population Growth Bioaccumulation and Biomagnification Population Growth (of humans) – Human population is currently growing exponentially. The world population is the total population of humans currently Bioaccumulation Biomagnification living and estimated to reach 7.8 billion people as of March 2020. It took approximately 200,000 years of human history for the world population to reach 1 billion, and only 200 more years to reach 7 billion.

More resources to review and explore population growth: • United Nations – Population • Gapminder – How did the world population change? • Our World in Data • American Museum of Natural History – Human Population Through Time • The Atlantic – What happens if the world population stops growing?

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C is for Climate Change O is for Overharvesting Climate Change – this is the average change in Overharvesting – (also called overexploitation) is the weather over a long period of time such as years and harvesting of a renewable resources, such as fisheries, decades. Overall, global climate change has led to an to the point of diminishing and decreasing returns. In increase in average global temperatures over the past general, overharvesting is used to described 100 years. Climate change has been caused by populations that are harvested at a rate that is increased amounts of greenhouse gases, such as unsustainable rates given the natural rate of mortality carbon dioxide (CO2), in the atmosphere due to and capacity for reproduction. human activities such as the combustion of fossil fuels. More resources to review and explore overharvesting: • National Wildlife Federation - Overexploitation More resources to review and explore climate change: • Overharvesting Facts for Kids - Kiddle • NASA – Climate Kids • NOAA – Overfishing an Coral Reefs • National Resources Defense Council – Global • TedEd – Overfishing Climate Change • United Nations – Natural Resources • Global Climate Change Explorer • United Nations – Climate Change • Live Science

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HIPPCO Causes Decreased Loss of Biodiversity Causes of Premature Extinction – Human Activity Biodiversity H – Habitat Destruction

Biodiversity is the number of different I – Introduction of Invasive ecosystems, types of species, and the genetic diversity of the individuals in Species the region. P – Pollution Species richness refers to the number of different species in a region. The P – Population Growth greater species richness, the more (humans) biodiverse the area. C – Climate Change

O – Overharvesting

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We are in the midst of a human-caused mass Check Your Understanding extinction event – part of the Anthropocene 1) Identify a variety of impacts that humans have on ecosystems using the Examples acronym “HIPPCO.” 2) Describe how several of those impacts directly affect species such as orca Dodo bird whales. 3) Describe how human impacts on ecosystems can result in the extinction of species. Tasmanian Wolf What’s Next?

Passenger Make an entry in your Learning Tracking Tool titled “Human Impacts on the Pigeon Environment.”

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5 Name______Period______Date______

How Humans Impact the Example from Notes Relationship to Orca Other Ideas and Questions Environment Population?

H –

I –

P –

P –

C –

O – Name______Period______Date______

From: https://www.ck12.org/biology/habitat-destruction/lesson/Habitat-Destruction-MS-LS/ Habitat Destruction From a human point of view, a habitat is where you live, go to school, and go to have fun. Your habitat can be altered, and you can easily adapt. Most people live in a few different places and go to a number of different schools throughout their life. But a plant or animal may not be able to adapt to a changed habitat. A habitat is the natural home or environment of an organism. Humans often destroy the habitats of other organisms. Habitat destruction can cause the extinction of species. Extinction is the complete disappearance of a species. Once a species is extinct, it can never recover. Some ways humans cause habitat destruction are by clearing land and by introducing non-native species of plants and animals. Land Loss Clearing land for agriculture and development is a major cause of habitat destruction. Within the past 100 years, the amount of total land used for agriculture has almost doubled. Land used for grazing cattle has more than doubled. Agriculture alone has cost the United States half of its wetlands (Figure below) and almost all of its tallgrass prairies. Native prairie ecosystems, with their thick fertile soils, deep-rooted grasses, diversity of colorful flowers, burrowing prairie dogs, and herds of bison and other animals, have virtually disappeared (Figure below).

Wetlands such as this one in Cape May, New Jersey, filter water and protect coastal lands from storms and floods.[Figure2]

The Flint Hills contain some of the largest remnants of tallgrass prairie habitat remaining in North America.[Figure3]

Herds of bison also made up part of the tallgrass prairie community.[Figure4] Slash-and-Burn Agriculture Other habitats that are being rapidly destroyed are forests, especially tropical rainforests. The largest cause of deforestation today is slash-and-burn agriculture (shown in the opening image). This means that when people want to turn a forest into a farm, they cut down all of the trees and then burn the remainder of the forest. This technique is used by over 200 million people in tropical forests throughout the world. As a consequence of slash-and-burn agriculture, nutrients are quickly lost from the soil. This often results in people abandoning the land within a few years. Then the top soil erodes and desertification can follow. Desertification turns forest into a desert, where it is difficult for plants to grow. Half of the Earth’s mature tropical forests are gone. At current rates of deforestation, all tropical forests will be gone by the year 2090. Non-native Species One of the main causes of extinction is introduction of exotic species into an environment. These exotic and new species can also be called invasive species or non-native species. These non-native species, being new to an area, may not have natural predators in the new habitat, which allows their populations to easily adapt and grow. Invasive species out-compete the native species for resources. Sometimes invasive species are so successful at living in a certain habitat that the native species go extinct (Figure below). Recently, cargo ships have transported zebra mussels, spiny waterfleas, and ruffe (a freshwater fish) into the Great Lakes (Figure below). These invasive species are better at hunting for food. They have caused some of the native species to go extinct. Invasive species can disrupt food chains, carry disease, prey on native species directly, and out-compete native species for limited resources, like food. All of these effects can lead to extinction of the native species.

An exotic species, the brown tree snake, hitchhiked on an aircraft to the Pacific Islands, causing the extinctions of many bird and mammal species which had evolved in the absence of predators.[Figure5]

These zebra mussels, an invasive species, live on most man-made and natural surfaces. Here they have infested the walls of the Arthur V. Ormond Lock on the Arkansas River. They have caused significant damage to American waterways, locks, and power plants.[Figure6] Other Causes Other causes of habitat destruction include poor fire management, overfishing, mining (Figure below), pollution, and storm damage. All of these can cause irreversible changes to a habitat and ecosystem.

Strip coal mining, pictured here, has destroyed the entire ecosystem.[Figure7] Examples of Habitat Destruction A habitat that is quickly being destroyed is the wetland. By the 1980s, over 80% of all wetlands in parts of the U.S. were destroyed. In Europe, many wetland species have gone extinct. For example, many bogs in Scotland have been lost because of human development. Another example of species loss due to habitat destruction happened on Madagascar’s central highland plateau. From 1970 to 2000, slash-and-burn agriculture destroyed about 10% of the country’s total native plants. The area turned into a wasteland. Soil from erosion entered the waterways. Much of the river ecosystems of several large rivers were also destroyed. Several fish species are almost extinct. Also, some coral reef formations in the Indian Ocean are completely lost.

Summary • There are many causes of habitat destruction, including clearing of land and introduction of invasive species. • Slash-and-burn agriculture can lead to desertification, meaning the fertile top soil is lost.

Habitat Loss https://www.nwf.org/Educational-Resources/Wildlife-Guide/Threats-to-Wildlife/Habitat-Loss Habitat loss—due to destruction, fragmentation, or degradation of habitat—is the primary threat to the survival of wildlife in the United States. When an ecosystem has been dramatically changed by human activities—such as agriculture, oil and gas exploration, commercial development, or water diversion—it may no longer be able to provide the food, water, cover, and places to raise young that wildlife need to survive. Every day there are fewer places left that wildlife can call home. Major Kinds of Habitat Loss

Habitat destruction: A bulldozer pushing down trees is the iconic image of habitat destruction. Other ways people directly destroy habitat include filling in wetlands, dredging rivers, mowing fields, and cutting down trees.

Habitat fragmentation: Much of the remaining terrestrial wildlife habitat in the U.S. has been cut up into fragments by roads and development. Aquatic species’ habitats have been fragmented by dams and water diversions. These fragments of habitat may not be large or connected enough to support species that need a large territory where they can find mates and food. The loss and fragmentation of habitats makes it difficult for migratory species to find places to rest and feed along their migration routes.

Habitat degradation: Pollution, invasive species, and disruption of ecosystem processes (such as changing the intensity of fires in an ecosystem) are some of the ways habitats can become so degraded, they no longer support native wildlife. Main Causes of Habitat Loss

Agriculture: Much of the habitat loss from agriculture was done long ago when settlers converted forests and prairies to cropland. Today, there is increasing pressure to redevelop conservation lands for high-priced food and biofuel crops.

Land conversion for development: The conversion of lands that once provided wildlife habitat to housing developments, roads, office parks, strip malls, parking lots and industrial sites continues, even during the current economic crisis. Water development: Dams and other water diversions siphon off and disconnect waters, changing hydrology and water chemistry (when nutrients are not able to flow downstream). During the dry season, the Colorado River has little to no water in it by the time it reaches the Sea of Cortez.

Pollution: Freshwater wildlife are most impacted by pollution. Pollutants such as untreated sewage, mining waste, acid rain, fertilizers and pesticides concentrate in rivers, lakes and wetlands and eventually end up in estuaries and the food web.

Climate change: The emerging driver of habitat loss is climate change. Wildlife that need the cool temperatures of high elevations, such as the American pika, may soon run out of habitat. Coastal wildlife may find their habitat underwater as sea levels rise. How to Combat Habitat Loss

Combat habitat loss in your community by creating a Certified Wildlife Habitat® near your home, school, or business. Plant native plants and put out a water source so that you can provide the food, water, cover, and places to raise young that wildlife need to survive.

Sources In Search of Wildlife-friendly Biofuels: Are Native Prairie Plants the Answer?, Science Daily Precious Heritage: The Status of Biodiversity in the United States. Stein, B.A., J.S. Adams and L.S. Kutner. Oxford University Press, New York: 2000.

3/26/2020 Invasive Species | National Wildlife Federation (https://www.nwf.org/donateheader?sc_camp=B75F90F235E54DF2A043295ADB8B51D4)

Invasive Species

"Invasive species"—they may not sound very threatening, but these invaders, large and small, have devastating effects on wildlife.

Invasive species are among the leading threats to native wildlife. Approximately 42 percent of threatened or endangered species (http://www.nwf.org/Educational-Resources/Wildlife- Guide/Understanding-Conservation/Endangered-Species.aspx) are at risk due to invasive species.

Donate https://www(htt .nwf.org/Educational-Resources/Wildlife-Guide/Threats-to-Wildlife/Invasive-Species// f /d t bil ) 1/10 3/26/2020 Invasive Species | National Wildlife Federation (hHttupmsa:/n/ whewalwth. nanwdf e.ocorgno/dmoiensa atreem alobso ialet )risk from invasive species. The impacts of invasive species on our natural ecosystems and economy cost billions of dollars each year. Many of our commercial, agricultural, and recreational activities depend on healthy native ecosystems.

What Makes a Species "Invasive"?

An invasive species can be any kind of living organism—an amphibian (like the cane toad), plant, insect, sh, fungus, bacteria, or even an organism’s seeds or eggs—that is not native to an ecosystem and causes harm. They can harm the environment, the economy, or even human health. Species that grow and reproduce quickly, and spread aggressively, with potential to cause harm, are given the label “invasive.”

An invasive species does not have to come from another country. For example, lake trout are native to the Great Lakes (/Educational-Resources/Wildlife-Guide/Wild-Places/Great-Lakes), but are considered to be an invasive species in Yellowstone Lake in Wyoming because they compete with native cutthroat trout for habitat.

How Invasive Species Spread

Invasive species are primarily spread by human activities, often unintentionally. People, and the goods we use, travel around the world very quickly, and they often carry uninvited species with them. Ships can carry aquatic organisms in their ballast water (/Our-Work/Environmental- Threats/Invasive-Species/Ballast-Water), while smaller boats may carry them on their propellers. Insects can geDto intaot woe od, shipping palettes, and crates that are shipped around the world. Some https://www(htt .nwf.org/Educational-Resources/Wildlife-Guide/Threats-to-Wildlife/Invasive-Species// f /d t bil ) 2/10 3/26/2020 Invasive Species | National Wildlife Federation (hottrnpasm://ewntwal wpl.annwtsf c.oanrg e/scdaopnea itnetmo tobhei wlei)ld and become invasive. And some invasive species are intentionally or accidentally released pets. For example, Burmese pythons are becoming a big problem in the Everglades.

In addition, higher average temperatures and changes in rain and snow patterns caused by climate change (/Educational-Resources/Wildlife-Guide/Threats-to-Wildlife/Climate-Change) will enable some invasive plant species—such as garlic mustard, kudzu, and purple loosestrife—to move into new areas. Insect pest infestations will be more severe as pests such as mountain pine beetle are able to take advantage of drought-weakened plants.

Threats to Native Wildlife

Invasive species cause harm to wildlife in many ways. When a new and aggressive species is introduced into an ecosystem, it may not have any natural predators or controls. It can breed and spread quickly, taking over an area. Native wildlife may not have evolved defenses against the invader, or they may not be able to compete with a species that has no predators.

The direct threats of invasive species include preying on native species, outcompeting native species for food or other resources, causing or carrying disease, and preventing native species from reproducing or killing a native species' young.

There are indirect threats of invasive species as well. Invasive species can change the food web in an ecosystem by destroying or replacing native food sources. The invasive species may provide little to no food value for wildlife. Invasive species can also alter the abundance or diversity of species (/Educational-Resources/Wildlife-Guide/Understanding-Conservation/Biodiversity) that are important habitat for native wildlife. Aggressive plant species like kudzu can quickly replace a diverse ecosystem with a monoculture of just kudzu. Additionally, some invasive species are capable of changing the conditions in an ecosystem, such as changing soil chemistry or the intensity of wildres.

Examples of Invasive Species

Asian Carp Donate https://www(htt .nwf.org/Educational-Resources/Wildlife-Guide/Threats-to-Wildlife/Invasive-Species// f /d t bil ) 3/10 3/26/2020 Invasive Species | National Wildlife Federation (https://www.nwf.org/donatemobile) Brown Marmorated Stink Bug

Zebra Mussels

Zebra mussels and quagga mussels are virtually identical, both physically and behaviorally. Originally from Eastern Europe, these tiny trespassers were picked up in the ballast water of ocean-going ships and brought to the Great Lakes in the 1980s. They spread dramatically, outcompeting native species for food and habitat, and by 1990, zebra mussels and quagga mussels had infested all of the Great Lakes. Now both quagga mussels and zebra mussels have spread to 29 states by hitching rides on boats moving between the Great Lakes and Mississippi River Basins. Articial channels like the Chicago Area Waterways System facilitate their spread. These man-made channels act like super-highways and are also a pathway for Asian carp, which are currently spreading towards the Great Lakes.

The quagga and zebra mussels blanketing the bottom of the Great Lakes lter water as they eat plankton and have succeeded in doubling water clarity during the past decade. Clear water may look nice to us, but the lack of plankton oating in the water means less food for native sh. Clearer water also allows sunlight to penetrate to the lake bottom, creating ideal conditions for algae to grow. In this way, zebra and quagga mussels have promoted the growth and spread of deadly algae blooms.

Zebra and quagga mussels harm native sh populations, ruin beaches and attach to boats, water intake pipes, and other structures, causing the Great Lakes economy billions of dollars a year in damage. They devastate native species by stripping the food web of plankton, which has a cascading effect throughout the ecosystem. Lack of food has caused populations of alewives, salmon, whitesh, and native mussel species to plummet.

In her ve-year lifetime, a single quagga or zebra mussel will produce about ve million eggs, 100,000 of which reach adulthood. The offspring of a single mussel will in turn produce a total of half a billion adult offspring. There are an estimated 10 trillion quagga and zebra mussels in the Great Lakes today. Once zebra and quagga mussels become established in a water body, they are impossible to fully eradicate. Scientists have not yet found solutions that kills zebra and quagga mussels without also harming other wildlife.

Donate https://www(htt .nwf.org/Educational-Resources/Wildlife-Guide/Threats-to-Wildlife/Invasive-Species// f /d t bil ) 4/10 3/26/2020 Invasive Species | National Wildlife Federation (https://www.nwf.org/donatemobile)

Additional examples:

Cogongrass is an Asian plant that arrived in the United States as seeds in packing material. It is now spreading through the Southeast, displacing native plants. It provides no food value for native wildlife, and increases the threat of wildre as it burns hotter and faster than native grasses.

Feral pigs will eat almost anything, including native birds. They compete with native wildlife for food sources such as acorns. Feral pigs spread diseases, such as brucellosis, to people and livestock. E. coli from their feces was implicated in the E. coli contamination of baby spinach in 2006.

European green crabs found their way into the San Francisco Bay area in 1989. They outcompete native species for food and habitat and eat huge quantities of native shellsh, threatening commercial sheries.

Dutch elm disease (caused by the fungus Ophiostoma ulmi) is transmitted to trees by elm bark beetles. Since 1930, the disease has spread from Ohio through most of the country, killing over half of the elm trees in the northern United States.

Water hyacinth is a beautiful aquatic plant, introduced to the U.S. from South America as an ornamental. In the wild, it forms dense mats, reducing sunlight for submerged plants and aquatic organisms, crowding out native aquatic plants, and clogging waterways and intake pipes.

Curbing the Spread

One way to curb the spread of invasive species (/Our-Work/Environmental-Threats/Invasive- Species) is to plant native plants and remove any invasive plants in your garden. There are many good native plant alternatives to common exotic ornamental plants. In addition, learn to identify invasive species in your area, and report any sightings to your county extension agent or local land manager.

Regularly clean your boots, gear, boat, tires, and any other equipment you use outdoors to remove insects and plant parts that may spread invasive species to new places. When camping, buy rewood near your campsite (within 30 miles) instead of bringing your own from home, and leave any extra for the next campers. Invertebrates and plants can easily hitch a ride on rewood you haul to or from a campsite—you could inadvertently introduce an invasive to a new area.

Donate https://www(htt .nwf.org/Educational-Resources/Wildlife-Guide/Threats-to-Wildlife/Invasive-Species// f /d t bil ) 5/10 3/26/2020 Washington is home to 700 invasive species… and some are deadly | Q13 FOX News

Washington is home to 700 invasive species… and some are deadly POSTED 11:28 AM, MARCH 1, 2018, BY Q13 NEWS STAFF, UPDATED AT 09:09AM, MARCH 4, 2018

This is an archived article and the information in the article may be outdated. Please look at the time stamp on the story to see when it was last updated.

SEATTLE — It’s a right of passage for Washingtonians to walk forests or along beaches and admire ora and fauna.

But how many of us stop and think:

Are these plants and animals supposed to be here?

Feb. 28-March 3 is Washington Invasive Species Awareness Week. Throughout the week, residents are encouraged to take note of the more than 700 From Invasivespecies.wa

invasive and non-native plants and animals in our

“They can actually die from eating it.”

area, and how they contribute to the $137 billion dollars each year in crop and habitat loss.

“We are really trying to protect native forests and farmlands as well,” said Sasha Shaw, a communications specialist with King County’s Noxious Weeds Program.

RELATED STORY Issaquah snowmobiler dies in Kittitas County avalanche https://q13fox.com/2018/03/01/washington-home-to-700-invasive-species-and-some-are-deadly/ 1/9 3/26/2020 Washington is home to 700 invasive species… and some are deadly | Q13 FOX News Shaw said noxious weeds like milfoil, tansy ragwort and parrotfeather all do damage to King County’s natural lands. Some clog important waterways – milfoil – while others, like poison hemlock, can harm humans.

A lot of times (hemlock) will get around the area people are growing gardens,” Shaw said. “Carrots and other plants look similar and it will confuse them and they can actually die from eating it.”

Washington State’s Invasive Species Council lists 50 priority invasive species of highest concern. The list includes:

Tansy ragwort – Common cause of poisoning cattle and horses Gypsy Moths – Causes incredible damage to forests, nurseries and vegation Zebra Mussels – Could cost the state millions a year and close down waters for recreational clamming. They clog drainpipes and change ecosystems. Northern Pike – Harm ecosystems by eating smaller sh. Recently found in Lake Washington.

Shaw wants people to be aware that not every animal or plant you spot in King County and elsewhere is meant to be there. Steps as simple as cleaning your boots can help prevent their spread.

“Brush your boots when you’re out hiking, clean off your waders … don’t spread this around,” Shaw said.

Shaw said the easiest way to report invasive species is to download the state’s invasive app.

NATIONAL & WORLD NEWS

https://q13fox.com/2018/03/01/washington-home-to-700-invasive-species-and-some-are-deadly/ 2/9 Air Pollution: Everything You Need to Know

How smog, soot, greenhouse gases, and other top air pollutants are affecting the planet—and your health. November 01, 2016 Jillian Mackenzie

iStock What Is Air Pollution?

Air pollution refers to the release of pollutants into the air that are detrimental to human health and the planet as a whole.

The Clean Air Act authorizes the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to protect public health by regulating the emissions of these harmful air pollutants. The NRDC has been a leading authority on this law since it was established in 1970.

What Causes Air Pollution?

“Most air pollution comes from energy use and production,” says John Walke, director of the Clean Air Project, part of the Climate and Clean Air program at NRDC. “Burning fossil fuels releases gases and chemicals into the air.” And in an especially destructive feedback loop, air pollution not only contributes to climate change but is also exacerbated by it. “Air pollution in the form of carbon dioxide and methane raises the earth’s temperature,” Walke says. “Another type of air pollution is then worsened by that increased heat: Smog forms when the weather is warmer and there’s more ultraviolet radiation.” Climate change also increases the production of allergenic air pollutants including mold (thanks to damp conditions caused by extreme weather and increased flooding) and pollen (due to a longer pollen season and more pollen production).

Effects of Air Pollution

“While we’ve made progress over the last 40-plus years improving air quality in the U.S. thanks to the Clean Air Act, climate change will make it harder in the future to meet pollution standards, which are designed to protect health,” says Kim Knowlton, senior scientist and deputy director of the NRDC Science Center.

Smog and soot These two are the most prevalent types of air pollution. Smog, or “ground-level ozone,” as it is more wonkily called, occurs when emissions from combusting fossil fuels react with sunlight. Soot, or “particulate matter,” is made up of tiny particles of chemicals, soil, smoke, dust, or allergens, in the form of gas or solids, that are carried in the air. The EPA’s “Plain English Guide to the Clean Air Act” states, “In many parts of the United States, pollution has reduced the distance and clarity of what we see by 70 percent.” The sources of smog and soot are similar. “Both come from cars and trucks, factories, power plants, incinerators, engines—anything that combusts fossil fuels such as coal, gas, or natural gas,” Walke says. The tiniest airborne particles in soot—whether they’re in the form of gas or solids—are especially dangerous because they can penetrate the lungs and bloodstream and worsen bronchitis, lead to heart attacks, and even hasten death.

Smog can irritate the eyes and throat and also damage the lungs—especially of people who work or exercise outside, children, and senior citizens. It’s even worse for people who have asthma or allergies—these extra pollutants only intensify their symptoms and can trigger asthma attacks.

Hazardous air pollutants These are either deadly or have severe health risks even in small amounts. Almost 200 are regulated by law; some of the most common are mercury, lead, dioxins, and benzene. “These are also most often emitted during gas or coal combustion, incinerating, or in the case of benzene, found in gasoline,” Walke says. Benzene, classified as a carcinogen by the EPA, can cause eye, skin, and lung irritation in the short term and blood disorders in the long term. Dioxins, more typically found in food but also present in small amounts in the air, can affect the liver in the short term and harm the immune, nervous, and endocrine systems, as well as reproductive functions. Lead in large amounts can damage children’s brains and kidneys, and even in small amounts it can affect children’s IQ and ability to learn. Mercury affects the central nervous system. Polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons, or PAHs, are toxic components of traffic exhaust and wildfire smoke. In large amounts, they have been linked to eye and lung irritation, blood and liver issues, and even cancer. In one recent study, the children of mothers who’d had higher PAH exposure during pregnancy had slower brain processing speeds and worse symptoms of ADHD.

Greenhouse gases By trapping the earth’s heat in the atmosphere, greenhouse gases lead to warmer temperatures and all the hallmarks of climate change: rising sea levels, more extreme weather, heat-related deaths, and increasing transmission of infectious diseases like Lyme. According to a 2014 EPA study, carbon dioxide was responsible for 81 percent of the country’s total greenhouse gas emissions, and methane made up 11 percent. “Carbon dioxide comes from combusting fossil fuels, and methane comes from natural and industrial sources, including the large amounts that are released during oil and gas drilling,” Walke says. “We emit far larger amounts of carbon dioxide, but methane is significantly more potent, so it’s also very destructive.” Another class of greenhouse gases, hydrofluorocarbons (HFCs), are thousands of times more powerful than carbon dioxide in their ability to trap heat. In October 2016, more than 140 countries reached an agreement to reduce the use of these chemicals—which are used in air conditioners and refrigerators—and find greener alternatives over time. David Doniger, director of NRDC’s Climate and Clean Air program, writes, “NRDC estimates that the agreed HFC phase-down will avoid the equivalent of more than 80 billion tons of CO2 over the next 35 years.”

Pollen and mold Mold and allergens from trees, weeds, and grass are also carried in the air, are exacerbated by climate change, and can be hazardous to health. They are not regulated by the government and are less directly connected to human actions, but they can be considered air pollution. “When homes, schools, or businesses get water damage, mold can grow and can produce allergenic airborne pollutants,” Knowlton says. “Mold exposure can precipitate asthma attacks or an allergic response, and some molds can even produce toxins that would be dangerous for anyone to inhale.”

Pollen allergies are worsening because of climate change. “Lab and field studies are showing that the more carbon dioxide pollen-producing plants—especially ragweed—are grown in, the bigger they grow and the more pollen they produce,” Knowlton says. “Climate change also extends the pollen production season, and some studies are beginning to suggest that ragweed pollen itself might be becoming a more potent allergen.” That means more people will suffer runny noses, fevers, itchy eyes, and other symptoms.

How to Help Reduce Air Pollution

“The less gasoline we burn, the better we’re doing to reduce air pollution and harmful effects of climate change,” Walke says. “Make good choices about transportation. When you can, walk, ride a bike, or take public transportation. For driving, choose cars that get better miles per gallon of gas or choose an electric car.” You can also investigate your power provider options—you may be able to request that your electricity be supplied by wind or solar. Buying your food locally cuts down on the fossil fuels burned in trucking or flying food in from across the country. And perhaps most important, “Support leaders who push for clean air and water and responsible steps on climate change,” Walke says.

How to Protect Your Health

• “When you see in the newspaper or hear on the weather report that pollution levels are high, it may be useful to limit the time when children go outside or you go for a jog,” Walke says. Generally, ozone levels tend to be lower in the morning.

• When you do exercise outside, stay as far as you can from heavily trafficked roads. Then shower and wash your clothes to remove fine particles.

• If the air quality is bad, stay inside with windows closed.

• Wear sunscreen. When ultraviolet radiation comes through the weakened ozone layer, it can cause skin damage and skin cancer.

Water Pollution: Everything You Need to Know

Our rivers, reservoirs, lakes, and seas are drowning in chemicals, waste, plastic, and other pollutants. Here’s why―and what you can do to help. May 14, 2018 Melissa Denchak

British poet W. H. Auden once noted, “Thousands have lived without love, not one without water.” Yet while we all know water is crucial for life, we trash it anyway. Some 80 percent of the world’s wastewater is dumped—largely untreated—back into the environment, polluting rivers, lakes, and oceans.

This widespread problem of water pollution is jeopardizing our health. Unsafe water kills more people each year than war and all other forms of violence combined. Meanwhile, our drinkable water sources are finite: Less than 1 percent of the earth’s freshwater is actually accessible to us. Without action, the challenges will only increase by 2050, when global demand for freshwater is expected to be one-third greater than it is now.

Sip a glass of cool, clear water as you read this, and you may think water pollution is a problem . . . somewhere else. But while most Americans have access to safe drinking water, potentially harmful contaminants—from arsenic to copper to lead—have been found in the tap water of every single state in the nation. Still, we’re not hopeless against the threat to clean water. To better understand the problem and what we can do about it, here’s an overview of what water pollution is, what causes it, and how we can protect ourselves.

What Is Water Pollution?

Water pollution occurs when harmful substances—often chemicals or microorganisms—contaminate a stream, river, lake, ocean, aquifer, or other body of water, degrading water quality and rendering it toxic to humans or the environment.

What Are the Causes of Water Pollution?

Water is uniquely vulnerable to pollution. Known as a “universal solvent,” water is able to dissolve more substances than any other liquid on earth. It’s the reason we have Kool-Aid and brilliant blue waterfalls. It’s also why water is so easily polluted. Toxic substances from farms, towns, and factories readily dissolve into and mix with it, causing water pollution.

Categories of Water Pollution

Groundwater When rain falls and seeps deep into the earth, filling the cracks, crevices, and porous spaces of an aquifer (basically an underground storehouse of water), it becomes groundwater—one of our least visible but most important natural resources. Nearly 40 percent of Americans rely on groundwater, pumped to the earth’s surface, for drinking water. For some folks in rural areas, it’s their only freshwater source. Groundwater gets polluted when contaminants—from pesticides and fertilizers to waste leached from landfills and septic systems—make their way into an aquifer, rendering it unsafe for human use. Ridding groundwater of contaminants can be difficult to impossible, as well as costly. Once polluted, an aquifer may be unusable for decades, or even thousands of years. Groundwater can also spread contamination far from the original polluting source as it seeps into streams, lakes, and oceans.

Surface water Covering about 70 percent of the earth, surface water is what fills our oceans, lakes, rivers, and all those other blue bits on the world map. Surface water from freshwater sources (that is, from sources other than the ocean) accounts for more than 60 percent of the water delivered to American homes. But a significant pool of that water is in peril. According to the most recent surveys on national water quality from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, nearly half of our rivers and streams and more than one-third of our lakes are polluted and unfit for swimming, fishing, and drinking. Nutrient pollution, which includes nitrates and phosphates, is the leading type of contamination in these freshwater sources. While plants and animals need these nutrients to grow, they have become a major pollutant due to farm waste and fertilizer runoff. Municipal and industrial waste discharges contribute their fair share of toxins as well. There’s also all the random junk that industry and individuals dump directly into waterways. Ocean water Eighty percent of ocean pollution (also called marine pollution) originates on land—whether along the coast or far inland. Contaminants such as chemicals, nutrients, and heavy metals are carried from farms, factories, and cities by streams and rivers into our bays and estuaries; from there they travel out to sea. Meanwhile, marine debris—particularly plastic—is blown in by the wind or washed in via storm drains and sewers. Our seas are also sometimes spoiled by oil spills and leaks—big and small—and are consistently soaking up carbon pollution from the air. The ocean absorbs as much as a quarter of man-made carbon emissions.

Point source When contamination originates from a single source, it’s called point source pollution. Examples include wastewater (also called effluent) discharged legally or illegally by a manufacturer, oil refinery, or wastewater treatment facility, as well as contamination from leaking septic systems, chemical and oil spills, and illegal dumping. The EPA regulates point source pollution by establishing limits on what can be discharged by a facility directly into a body of water. While point source pollution originates from a specific place, it can affect miles of waterways and ocean.

Nonpoint source Nonpoint source pollution is contamination derived from diffuse sources. These may include agricultural or stormwater runoff or debris blown into waterways from land. Nonpoint source pollution is the leading cause of water pollution in U.S. waters, but it’s difficult to regulate, since there’s no single, identifiable culprit.

Transboundary It goes without saying that water pollution can’t be contained by a line on a map. Transboundary pollution is the result of contaminated water from one country spilling into the waters of another. Contamination can result from a disaster—like an oil spill—or the slow, downriver creep of industrial, agricultural, or municipal discharge.

The Most Common Types of Water Contamination

Agricultural

Toxic green algae in Copco Reservoir, northern California Aurora Photos/Alamy Not only is the agricultural sector the biggest consumer of global freshwater resources, with farming and livestock production using about 70 percent of the earth’s surface water supplies, but it’s also a serious water polluter. Around the world, agriculture is the leading cause of water degradation. In the United States, agricultural pollution is the top source of contamination in rivers and streams, the second-biggest source in wetlands, and the third main source in lakes. It’s also a major contributor of contamination to estuaries and groundwater. Every time it rains, fertilizers, pesticides, and animal waste from farms and livestock operations wash nutrients and pathogens—such bacteria and viruses—into our waterways. Nutrient pollution, caused by excess nitrogen and phosphorus in water or air, is the number- one threat to water quality worldwide and can cause algal blooms, a toxic soup of blue-green algae that can be harmful to people and wildlife.

Sewage and wastewater Used water is wastewater. It comes from our sinks, showers, and toilets (think sewage) and from commercial, industrial, and agricultural activities (think metals, solvents, and toxic sludge). The term also includes stormwater runoff, which occurs when rainfall carries road salts, oil, grease, chemicals, and debris from impermeable surfaces into our waterways

More than 80 percent of the world’s wastewater flows back into the environment without being treated or reused, according to the United Nations; in some least-developed countries, the figure tops 95 percent. In the United States, wastewater treatment facilities process about 34 billion gallons of wastewater per day. These facilities reduce the amount of pollutants such as pathogens, phosphorus, and nitrogen in sewage, as well as heavy metals and toxic chemicals in industrial waste, before discharging the treated waters back into waterways. That’s when all goes well. But according to EPA estimates, our nation’s aging and easily overwhelmed sewage treatment systems also release more than 850 billion gallons of untreated wastewater each year.

Oil pollution Big spills may dominate headlines, but consumers account for the vast majority of oil pollution in our seas, including oil and gasoline that drips from millions of cars and trucks every day. Moreover, nearly half of the estimated 1 million tons of oil that makes its way into marine environments each year comes not from tanker spills but from land-based sources such as factories, farms, and cities. At sea, tanker spills account for about 10 percent of the oil in waters around the world, while regular operations of the shipping industry— through both legal and illegal discharges—contribute about one-third. Oil is also naturally released from under the ocean floor through fractures known as seeps.

Radioactive substances Radioactive waste is any pollution that emits radiation beyond what is naturally released by the environment. It’s generated by uranium mining, nuclear power plants, and the production and testing of military weapons, as well as by universities and hospitals that use radioactive materials for research and medicine. Radioactive waste can persist in the environment for thousands of years, making disposal a major challenge. Consider the decommissioned Hanford nuclear weapons production site in Washington, where the cleanup of 56 million gallons of radioactive waste is expected to cost more than $100 billion and last through 2060. Accidentally released or improperly disposed of contaminants threaten groundwater, surface water, and marine resources.

What Are the Effects of Water Pollution?

On human health To put it bluntly: Water pollution kills. In fact, it caused 1.8 million deaths in 2015, according to a study published in The Lancet. Contaminated water can also make you ill. Every year, unsafe water sickens about 1 billion people. And low-income communities are disproportionately at risk because their homes are often closest to the most polluting industries.

Waterborne pathogens, in the form of disease-causing bacteria and viruses from human and animal waste, are a major cause of illness from contaminated drinking water. Diseases spread by unsafe water include cholera, giardia, and typhoid. Even in wealthy nations, accidental or illegal releases from sewage treatment facilities, as well as runoff from farms and urban areas, contribute harmful pathogens to waterways. Thousands of people across the United States are sickened every year by Legionnaires’ disease (a severe form of pneumonia contracted from water sources like cooling towers and piped water), with cases cropping up from California’s Disneyland to Manhattan’s Upper East Side.

A woman using bottled water to wash her three-week-old son at their home in Flint, Michigan Todd McInturf/The Detroit News/AP Meanwhile, the plight of residents in Flint, Michigan—where cost-cutting measures and aging water infrastructure created the recent lead contamination crisis—offers a stark look at how dangerous chemical and other industrial pollutants in our water can be. The problem goes far beyond Flint and involves much more than lead, as a wide range of chemical pollutants—from heavy metals such as arsenic and mercury to pesticides and nitrate fertilizers—are getting into our water supplies. Once they’re ingested, these toxins can cause a host of health issues, from cancer to hormone disruption to altered brain function. Children and pregnant women are particularly at risk.

Even swimming can pose a risk. Every year, 3.5 million Americans contract health issues such as skin rashes, pinkeye, respiratory infections, and hepatitis from sewage-laden coastal waters, according to EPA estimates.

On the environment In order to thrive, healthy ecosystems rely on a complex web of animals, plants, bacteria, and fungi—all of which interact, directly or indirectly, with each other. Harm to any of these organisms can create a chain effect, imperiling entire aquatic environments.

When water pollution causes an algal bloom in a lake or marine environment, the proliferation of newly introduced nutrients stimulates plant and algae growth, which in turn reduces oxygen levels in the water. This dearth of oxygen, known as eutrophication, suffocates plants and animals and can create “dead zones,” where waters are essentially devoid of life. In certain cases, these harmful algal blooms can also produce neurotoxins that affect wildlife, from whales to sea turtles.

Chemicals and heavy metals from industrial and municipal wastewater contaminate waterways as well. These contaminants are toxic to aquatic life—most often reducing an organism’s life span and ability to reproduce—and make their way up the food chain as predator eats prey. That’s how tuna and other big fish accumulate high quantities of toxins, such as mercury.

Marine ecosystems are also threatened by marine debris, which can strangle, suffocate, and starve animals. Much of this solid debris, such as plastic bags and soda cans, gets swept into sewers and storm drains and eventually out to sea, turning our oceans into trash soup and sometimes consolidating to form floating garbage patches. Discarded fishing gear and other types of debris are responsible for harming more than 200 different species of marine life.

Meanwhile, ocean acidification is making it tougher for shellfish and coral to survive. Though they absorb about a quarter of the carbon pollution created each year by burning fossil fuels, oceans are becoming more acidic. This process makes it harder for shellfish and other species to build shells and may impact the nervous systems of sharks, clownfish, and other marine life.

What Can You Do to Prevent Water Pollution?

With your actions It’s easy to tsk-tsk the oil company with a leaking tanker, but we’re all accountable to some degree for today’s water pollution problem. Fortunately, there are some simple ways you can prevent water contamination or at least limit your contribution to it:

• Reduce your plastic consumption and reuse or recycle plastic when you can. • Properly dispose of chemical cleaners, oils, and non-biodegradable items to keep them from ending up down the drain.

• Maintain your car so it doesn’t leak oil, antifreeze, or coolant.

• If you have a yard, consider landscaping that reduces runoff and avoid applying pesticides and herbicides.

• If you have a pup, be sure to pick up its poop.

With your voice One of the most effective ways to stand up for our waters is to speak out in support of the Clean Water Rule, which clarifies the Clean Water Act’s scope and protects the drinking water of one in three Americans.

Tell the federal government, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, and your local elected officials that you support the Clean Water Rule. Also, learn how you and those around you can get involved in the policymaking process. Our public waterways serve every American. We should all have a say in how they’re protected. What Happens When the World’s Population Stops Growing? Africa will be the most populous continent. Islam will be the most popular religion. And there are going to be a lot more old people.

JOE PINSKER JULY 31, 2019

NASA / REUTERS For most of the time that humans have existed, our ranks have grown really, really slowly. There were an estimated 4 million people on Earth in 10,000 B.C., and after the following 10 millennia, the planetwide population had only reached 190 million. Even in 1800, the total number of humans was still under 1 billion. The climb since then—made possible by advances in medicine, sanitation, and food production—has been astounding. By 1900, there were 1.65 billion people; by 2000, there were more than 6 billion. Just two decades later, the global population sits at 7.7 billion. But soon—or at least, soon in the context of human history—the number of people on Earth will stop growing. Based on the latest figures from the United Nations, demographers’ best guess for when this will happen is about 2100. By then, the global population is projected to have risen to just shy of 11 billion. Humanity has experienced population drop-offs before—the Black Death is thought to have killed about 200 million people—but this time will be different. “In the past, when the world population experienced a decline,” Tom Vogl, a development economist at UC San Diego, told me, “it was because a lot of people died.” This coming transition, meanwhile, will be the result of people having fewer kids—a product of rising incomes and levels of education, especially for women and especially in less-wealthy countries.

There’s always some uncertainty to making predictions, but Vogl said that population projections are usually “less uncertain” than other social and economic projections. This is because researchers already know roughly how many humans there are now, as well as how old everyone is, so they can guess, with some confidence, how many people will be of childbearing age in the next couple of decades—which means they can then guess how many children those people will have.

Even if future fertility rates stray a bit from expectations, Vogl said, it wouldn’t “change the fact that sometime in the next [100 years], the world’s population is going to peak.” And his hunch is that the population is unlikely to go up from there, barring some major increase in fertility rates (perhaps as a result of a political movement that encourages people to have a lot of babies, which is what happened in China in the mid-20th century). Because some determinants of what the population will be 80 years from now are locked in today, it’s possible to anticipate broad demographic shifts. “By the time the world population stabilizes, Africa is going to be the largest world region in terms of population … and Islam is going to be the world’s largest religion,” Vogl said. And crucially, the human population will, as a whole, get older. The UN’s data suggest that during the eight decades from 2020 to 2100, the number of people aged 80 or older will rise from 146 million to 881 million; during roughly that same span of time, humans’ median age will increase from 31 to 42. When the population of a single country gets older like this, “that typically poses big problems for the country’s politics,” Vogl said. In this scenario, working people have to support a growing number of retirees, both on the society level, in terms of funding national retirement-benefits programs, and on the household level, where aging relatives might need family members’ care. (Japan is a frequently cited example of a country currently facing these issues as a result of low fertility rates and long life spans.) “When that happens on a global level, it means that that pension crisis is going to happen in many countries independently, at different points along that global path,” Vogl said. As each country encounters this problem, immigration—bringing in younger, work-ready people from countries with a lower concentration of older people—could counteract the aging dynamics. But today’s politics indicate that immigration is not a simple fix. Less controversial ways for countries to offset this problem include growing their economy (because there would be more money to go around) and creating more opportunities for women in the labor market (which would alter a country’s ratio of workers to retirees). The population trends of the rest of the century will also alter the texture of family life. As the fertility rate declines in many parts of the world, families will get smaller. This means children will tend to have fewer siblings, and parents can invest more of their resources and attention in each child, perhaps paying more to send them to a better school, notes Parfait Eloundou-Enyegue, a development-sociology professor at Cornell University. “And also, the culture moves in the direction in which the families become nuclear rather than extended,” he adds. “So in Africa, for instance, you have extended family systems where people would live with cousins and in-laws.” In many households, that family structure might start to give way to a smaller one. This will have both emotional consequences—people without many relatives may struggle to find familial companionship—and economic ones. Large extended families, Eloundou- Enyegue notes, are effective at diffusing financial responsibilities, because family members can help one another out. “As families shrink, we have to think about that dimension of economic welfare: How do we manage risk?” he says. When Eloundou-Enyegue thinks about the coming demographic shifts, he also wonders how they will alter the world’s cultural centers of gravity. “Because the young shape a lot of the large segments of the culture—let’s say, artistic culture, or sports culture—it would be interesting to see where most of the young people [will be],” he says. According to his calculations based on the UN’s data, the proportion of all humans on Earth under the age of 25 who live in Asia will drop from 56 to 37 percent between next year and 2100. Meanwhile, Africa’s share of the global population of young people will shoot up, from 25 to 48 percent. (The proportion living in the rest of the world will not fluctuate much.) Amid all this, the planet itself will change too. “We’ve done a whole bunch of damage to the environment,” said Vogl of the effects of the global population’s precipitous rise in the 20th century. When I asked him how concerned he is about the environmental toll of further growth, he said, “I’m pretty worried, mostly by the total inability of the global political apparatus to grapple with this issue and to try to find solutions.” Unfortunately, the demographic changes of the 21st century will not do much to help matters. Eloundou-Enyegue points out that the problems that come up—whether they have to do with the environment, shifting family structures, or any number of other things—will hit different countries and regions at different times. “Just looking at the average global picture is a statistical simplification, because the world is really, really diverse in terms of the [fertility] rates that we have now,” he said. And because the leveling off of the population by about 2100 will arrive incrementally across countries, and not all at once, “that may make it difficult to have a uniform debate or consensus about what the situation is and what the remedies are.” Uniform consensus has never been humanity’s strong suit, but at least we have the rest of the century to prepare for what’s ahead. 3/26/2020 Population | United Nations

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Population

Our growing population

In 1950, ve years after the founding of the United Nations, world population was estimated at around 2.6 billion people. It reached 5 billion in 1987and 6 billion in 1999. In October 2011, the global population was estimated to be 7 billion. A global movement "7 Billion Actions" was launched to mark this milestone. The world’s population is expected to increase by 2 billion Dominic Nahr/Magnum Photos Two healthy born twins in Edna Adan persons in the next 30 years, Maternity Hospital, Somalia from 7.7 billion currently to 9.7 billion in 2050 and could peak at nearly 11 billion around 2100. https://www.un.org/en/sections/issues-depth/population/index.html 1/5 3/26/2020 Population | United Nations This dramatic growth has been driven largely by increasing numbers of people surviving to reproductive age, and has been accompanied by major changes in fertility rates, increasing urbanization and accelerating migration. These trends will have far-reaching implications for generations to come.

China and India: most populated countries Sixty-one per cent of the global population lives in Asia (4.7 billion), 17 per cent in Africa (1.3 billion), 10 per cent in Europe (750 million), 8 per cent in Latin America and the Caribbean (650 million), and the remaining 5 per cent in Northern America (370 million) and Oceania (43 million). China (1.44 billion) and India (1.39 billion) remain the two largest countries of the world, both with more than 1 billion people, representing 19 and 18 per cent of the world’s population, respectively. Around 2027, India is projected to overtake China as the world’s most populous country, while China’s population is projected to decrease by 31.4 million, or around 2.2 per cent, between 2019 and 2050. (Source: World Population Prospects 2019 (https://population.un.org/wpp/))

The world in 2100

The world population is projected to reach 8.5 billion in 2030, and to increase further to 9.7 billion in 2050 and 11.2 billion by 2100. As with any type of projection, there is a degree of uncertainty surrounding these latest population projections. These gures are based on the medium projection variant, which assumes a decline of fertility for countries where large families are still prevalent, as well as a slight increase of fertility in several countries with fewer than two children per woman on average. Survival prospects are also projected to improve in all countries.

Africa: fastest growing continent More than half of global population growth between now and 2050 is expected to occur in Africa. Africa has the highest rate of population growth among major areas. The population of sub-Saharan Africa is projected to double by 2050. A rapid population increase in Africa is anticipated even if there is a substantial reduction of fertility levels in the near future. Regardless of the uncertainty surrounding future trends in fertility in Africa, the large number of young people currently on the continent, who will reach adulthood in the coming years and have children of their own, ensures that the region will play a central role in shaping the size and distribution of the world’s population over the coming decades.

https://www.un.org/en/sections/issues-depth/population/index.html 2/5 3/26/2020 Population | United Nations Shrinking population in Europe In sharp contrast, the populations of 55 countries or areas in the world are expected to decrease by 2050, of which 26 may see a reduction of at least ten per cent. Several countries are expected to see their populations decline by more than 15 per cent by 2050, including Bosnia and Herzegovina, Bulgaria, Croatia, Hungary, Japan, Latvia, Lithuania, Republic of Moldova, Romania, Serbia, and Ukraine. Fertility in all European countries is now below the level required for full replacement of the population in the long run (around 2.1 children per woman), and in the majority of cases, fertility has been below the replacement level for several decades.

Factors influencing the population growth

 Fertility rates

Future population growth is highly dependent on the path that future fertility will take. According to the World Population Prospects (2019 Revision) (https://population.un.org/wpp/), global fertility is projected to fall from 2.5 children per woman in 2019 to 2.2 in 2050.

 Increasing longevity

Overall, signicant gains in life expectancy have been achieved in recent years. Globally, life expectancy at birth is expected to rise from 72.6 years in 2019 to 77.1 years in 2050. While considerable progress has been made in closing the longevity differential between countries, large gaps remain. In 2019, life expectancy at birth in the least developed countries lags 7.4 years behind the global average, due largely to persistently high levels of child and maternal mortality, as well as violence, conict and the continuing impact of the HIV epidemic.

 International migration

International migration is a much smaller component of population change than births or deaths. However, in some countries and areas the impact of migration on population size is signicant, namely in countries that send or receive large numbers of economic migrants and those affected by refugee ows. Between 2010 and 2020, fourteen countries or areas will see a net inow of more than one million migrants, while ten countries will see a net outow of similar magnitude.

United Nations role in population issues UN Population Division The United Nations system has long been involved in addressing these complex and interrelated issues – notably, through the work of the U (http://www.unfpa.org/)N Population Fund (UNFPA) (http://www.unfpa.org/) and the UN Population Division (http://www.un.org/en/development/desa/population/index.shtml).

The Population Division pulls together information on such issues as international migration and development, urbanization, world population prospects and policies, and marriage and fertility statistics. It supports UN bodies such as the Commission on Population and Development (http://www.un.org/en/development/desa/population/commission/index.shtml), and supports implementation of the Programme of Action adopted by the 1994 International Conference on Population and Development (IPCD).

https://www.un.org/en/sections/issues-depth/population/index.html 3/5 3/26/2020 Population | United Nations The Population Division prepares the ocial United Nations demographic estimates and projections for all countries and areas of the world, helps States build capacity to formulate population policies, and enhances coordination of related UN system activities through its participation in the Committee for the Coordination of Statistical Activities (http://unstats.un.org/unsd/accsub/index1.htm).

UN Population Fund The UN Population Fund (UNFPA) (http://www.unfpa.org/) started operations in 1969 to assume a leading role within the UN system in promoting population programmes, based on the human right of individuals and couples to freely determine the size of their families. At the International Conference on Population and Development (http://www.unfpa.org/icpd) (Cairo, 1994), its mandate was eshed out in greater detail, to give more emphasis to the gender and human rights dimensions of population issues, and UNFPA was given the lead role in helping countries carry out the Conference’s Programme of Action (http://www.unfpa.org/publications/international-conference-population-and-development-programme-action). The three key areas of the UNFPA mandate are reproductive health (http://www.unfpa.org/sexual-reproductive- health), gender equality (http://www.unfpa.org/gender-equality), and population and development (http://www.unfpa.org/world-population-trends).

World Population Day (http://www.un.org/en/events/populationday/) is observed annually on 11 July. It marks the date, in 1987, when the world’s population hit the 5 billion mark.

Resources:

 World Population Dashboard (http://www.unfpa.org/world-population-dashboard)  World Population Prospects 2019 (https://population.un.org/wpp/)

GLOBAL ISSUES

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Africa (../africa/index.html)

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AIDS (../aids/index.html)

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https://www.un.org/en/sections/issues-depth/population/index.html 4/5 Global Climate Change: What You Need to Know

The lowdown on the earth’s central environmental threat. February 23, 2017 Melissa Denchak What is climate change?

The term climate refers to the general weather conditions of a place over many years. In the United States, for example, Maine’s climate is cold and snowy in winter while South Florida’s is tropical year-round. Climate change is a significant variation of average weather conditions—say, conditions becoming warmer, wetter, or drier—over several decades or more. It’s that longer-term trend that differentiates climate change from natural weather variability. And while “climate change” and “global warming” are often used interchangeably, global warming—the recent rise in the global average temperature near the earth’s surface—is just one aspect of climate change.

How is climate change measured over time?

Earth-orbiting satellites, remote meteorological stations, and ocean buoys are used to monitor present-day weather and climate, but it’s paleoclimatology data from natural sources like ice cores, tree rings, corals, and ocean and lake sediments that have enabled scientists to extend the earth’s climatic records back millions of years. These records provide a comprehensive look at the long-term changes in the earth’s atmosphere, oceans, land surface, and cryosphere (frozen water systems). Scientists then feed this data into sophisticated climate models that predict future climate trends—with impressive accuracy.

What causes climate change?

The mechanics of the earth’s climate system are simple. When energy from the sun is reflected off the earth and back into space (mostly by clouds and ice), or when the earth’s atmosphere releases energy, the planet cools. When the earth absorbs the sun’s energy, or when atmospheric gases prevent heat released by the earth from radiating into space (the greenhouse effect), the planet warms. A variety of factors, both natural and human, can influence the earth’s climate system.

Natural causes of climate change As we all know, the earth has gone through warm and cool phases in the past, and long before humans were around. Forces that contribute to climate change include the sun’s intensity, volcanic eruptions, and changes in naturally occurring greenhouse gas concentrations. But records indicate that today’s climatic warming—particularly the warming since the mid-20th century—is occurring much faster than ever before and can’t be explained by natural causes alone. According to NASA, “These natural causes are still in play today, but their influence is too small or they occur too slowly to explain the rapid warming seen in recent decades.”

Anthropogenic causes of climate change Humans—more specifically, the greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions we generate—are the leading cause of the earth’s rapidly changing climate. Greenhouse gases play an important role in keeping the planet warm enough to inhabit. But the amount of these gases in our atmosphere has skyrocketed in recent decades. According to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), concentrations of carbon dioxide, methane, and nitrous oxides “have increased to levels unprecedented in at least the last 800,000 years.” Indeed, the atmosphere’s share of carbon dioxide—the planet’s chief climate change contributor— has risen by 40 percent since preindustrial times.

The burning of fossil fuels like coal, oil, and gas for electricity, heat, and transportation is the primary source of human-generated emissions. A second major source is deforestation, which releases sequestered carbon into the air. It’s estimated that logging, clear-cutting, fires, and other forms of forest degradation contribute up to 20 percent of global carbon emissions. Other human activities that generate air pollution include fertilizer use (a primary source of nitrous oxide emissions), livestock production (cattle, buffalo, sheep, and goats are major methane emitters), and certain industrial processes that release fluorinated gases. Activities like agriculture and road construction can change the reflectivity of the earth’s surface, leading to local warming or cooling, too.

Though our planet’s forests and oceans absorb greenhouse gases from the atmosphere through photosynthesis and other processes, these natural carbon sinks can’t keep up with our rising emissions. The resulting buildup of greenhouse gases is causing alarmingly fast warming worldwide. It’s estimated that the earth’s average temperature rose by about 1 degree Fahrenheit during the 20th century. If that doesn’t sound like much, consider this: When the last ice age ended and the northeastern United States was covered by more than 3,000 feet of ice, average temperatures were just 5 to 9 degrees cooler than they are now.

The effects of global climate change

According to the World Economic Forum’s 2016 Global Risks Report, the failure to mitigate and adapt to climate change will be “the most impactful risk” facing communities worldwide in the coming decade— ahead even of weapons of mass destruction and water crises. Blame its cascading effects: As climate change transforms global ecosystems, it affects everything from the places we live to the water we drink to the air we breathe.

Extreme weather

A view of the Seine river flood in Paris near Bir-Hakeim bridge, which reached a 30-year high in June 2016 As the earth’s atmosphere heats up, it collects, retains, and drops more water, changing weather patterns and making wet areas wetter and dry areas drier. Higher temperatures worsen and increase the frequency of many types of disasters, including storms, floods, heat waves, and droughts. These events can have devastating and costly consequences, jeopardizing access to clean drinking water, fueling out-of-control wildfires, damaging property, creating hazardous-material spills, polluting the air, and leading to loss of life.

Dirty air

Smog in Turin, Italy Air pollution and climate change are inextricably linked, with one exacerbating the other. When the earth’s temperatures rise, not only does our air gets dirtier—with smog and soot levels going up—but there are also more allergenic air pollutants such as circulating mold (thanks to damp conditions from extreme weather and more floods) and pollen (due to longer, stronger pollen seasons).

Health risks According to the World Health Organization, “climate change is expected to cause approximately 250,000 additional deaths per year” between 2030 and 2050. As global temperatures rise, so do the number of fatalities and illnesses from heat stress, heatstroke, and cardiovascular and kidney disease. As air pollution worsens, so does respiratory health—particularly for the 300 million people living with asthma worldwide; there’s more airborne pollen and mold to torment hay fever and allergy sufferers, too. Extreme weather events, such as severe storms and flooding, can lead to injury, drinking water contamination, and storm damage that may compromise basic infrastructure or lead to community displacement. Indeed, historical models suggest the likelihood of being displaced by a disaster is now 60 percent higher than it was four decades ago—and the largest increases in displacement are driven by weather- and climate-related events. (It’s worth noting that displacement comes with its own health threats, such as increases in urban crowding, trauma, social unrest, lack of clean water, and transmission of infectious diseases.) A warmer, wetter world is also a boon for insect-borne diseases such as dengue fever, West Nile virus, and Lyme disease.

Rising seas

Aerial of the Marshall Islands landscape, which are feeling the effects of rising sea levels The Arctic is heating twice as fast as any other place on the planet. As its ice sheets melt into the seas, our oceans are on track to rise one to four feet higher by 2100, threatening coastal ecosystems and low-lying areas. Island nations face particular risk, as do some of the world’s largest cities, including New York, Miami, Mumbai, and Sydney.

Warmer, more acidic oceans

Fish and corals near Limestone Island, Indonesia The earth’s oceans absorb between one-quarter and one-third of our fossil fuel emissions and are now 30 percent more acidic than they were in preindustrial times. This acidification poses a serious threat to underwater life, particularly creatures with calcified shells or skeletons like oysters, clams, and coral. It can have a devastating impact on shellfisheries, as well as the fish, birds, and mammals that depend on shellfish for sustenance. Rising ocean temperatures are also altering the range and population of underwater species and contributing to coral bleaching events capable of killing entire reefs—ecosystems that support more than 25 percent of all marine life.

Imperiled ecosystems

Two polar bears on a small ice floe Climate change is increasing pressure on wildlife to adapt to changing habitats—and fast. Many species are seeking out cooler climates and higher altitudes, altering seasonal behaviors, and adjusting traditional migration patterns. These shifts can fundamentally transform entire ecosystems and the intricate webs of life that depend on them. As a result, according to a 2014 IPCC climate change report, many species now face “increased extinction risk due to climate change.” And one 2015 study showed that mammals, fish, birds, reptiles, and other vertebrate species are disappearing 114 times faster than they should be, a phenomenon that has been linked to climate change, pollution, and deforestation—all interconnected threats. On the flip side, milder winters and longer summers have enabled some species to thrive, including tree-killing insects that are endangering entire forests.

Climate change facts Despite what climate deniers and fossil fuel lackeys claim—for instance, that the science on global warming is “far from settled”—there’s nothing to debate; climate change is a reality. In its most recent report, the IPCC—the foremost international scientific body for the assessment of climate change—states, “Warming of the climate system is unequivocal, and since the 1950s, many of the observed changes are unprecedented over decades to millennia. The atmosphere and ocean have warmed, the amounts of snow and ice have diminished, and sea level has risen.” Our last decade—2000 to 2009—was hotter than any other decade in at least the past 1,300 years. Analyses indicate that 2016 was the hottest year on record. The previous record year was 2015. Before that, 2014.

The responsibility to reverse this worrying trend lies with us. At least 97 percent of actively publishing climate scientists endorse the consensus position that humans are the lead drivers of climate change. As the IPCC states with its highest degree of confidence, “It is extremely likely that more than half of the observed increase in global average surface temperature from 1951 to 2010 was caused by the anthropogenic increase in GHG concentrations and other anthropogenic forcings together.”

Climate change solutions

We can mitigate global climate change and help stem its detrimental impacts, but doing so will require tackling its root cause: pollution from burning fossil fuels.

Paris climate agreement At the 2015 Paris Climate Change Conference, nearly every nation on earth committed to actions aimed at shifting away from dirty fossil fuels and toward cleaner, smarter energy options in order to limit global temperature rise this century to 2 degrees Celsius—or 1.5 degrees Celsius, if possible.

For its part, the United States—the second-largest contributor to global emissions, after China—pledged to cut its output by 26 percent to 28 percent (relative to 2005 levels) by 2025. Making good on that pledge, however, will require the country to fully implement the Clean Power Plan, which establishes the first national limits on carbon pollution from power plants. We must also move forward with the Obama administration’s Climate Action Plan, which includes steps to promote renewable energy sources, increase fuel economy standards, prioritize energy efficiency, and reduce emissions of greenhouse gases beyond carbon, such as methane.

Fast-forward to today, and President Trump has threatened to abandon the Paris climate agreement and to eliminate “harmful and unnecessary policies such as the Climate Action Plan.” Indeed, his America First Energy Plan not only promises to shackle the United States to climate-polluting fossil fuels but also ignores the ongoing clean energy revolution, which is creating millions of jobs and saving billions of dollars through investments in solar, wind, and other renewable energy resources.

Pulling out of the Paris climate agreement and reneging on our climate commitments will scuttle the United States’ global lead on climate change and put our environment, prosperity, and national security at risk. It will also fly in the face of the 71 percent of Americans, including 57 percent of Republicans, who support U.S. participation in the accord. “Americans know that if we retreat from the Paris agreement, we’re retreating from our fundamental obligation to leave our children a livable planet,” says NRDC President Rhea Suh. We must fight to keep a seat at the table, and to ensure the Trump administration doesn’t water down the climate commitments to which we agreed.

Climate action at home Tackling global climate change is a Herculean task, one that depends on international consensus and the efforts of communities, companies, and individuals alike. To that end, California, Illinois, Iowa, and other states are championing clean energy industries, such as solar and wind; cities like Philadelphia and New York are taking action to mitigate climate change and bolster climate resilience; and in November 2016, hundreds of American companies voiced their support for low-emissions policies and the Paris climate agreement. There are myriad ways that you can help, too. Picking up the phone to call Congress about environmental policies that matter, supporting renewable energy projects, and prioritizing fuel and energy efficiency will not only curb individual carbon emissions but bolster clean alternatives to dirty fossil fuels. We must all step up—and now.

Climate Change

Vidar Nordli-Mathisen The wind farm “Los Granujales” in the South of Spain (Vejer de la Frontera, Cádiz). Replacing fossil fuels with renewable energy sources like wind is one of the measures needed to slow down climate change. Climate Change is the defining issue of our time and we are at a defining moment. From shifting weather patterns that threaten food production, to rising sea levels that increase the risk of catastrophic flooding, the impacts of climate change are global in scope and unprecedented in scale. Without drastic action today, adapting to these impacts in the future will be more difficult and costly.

The Human Fingerprint on Greenhouse Gases

Greenhouse gases occur naturally and are essential to the survival of humans and millions of other living things, by keeping some of the sun’s warmth from reflecting back into space and making Earth livable. But after more than a century and a half of industrialization, deforestation, and large scale agriculture, quantities of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere have risen to record levels not seen in three million years. As populations, economies and standards of living grow, so does the cumulative level of greenhouse gas (GHGs) emissions.

There are some basic well-established scientific links:

• The concentration of GHGs in the earth’s atmosphere is directly linked to the average global temperature on Earth;

• The concentration has been rising steadily, and mean global temperatures along with it, since the time of the Industrial Revolution;

• The most abundant GHG, accounting for about two-thirds of GHGs, carbon dioxide (CO2), is largely the product of burning fossil fuels. The UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) was set up by the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) and United Nations Environment to provide an objective source of scientific information. In 2013 the IPCC provided more clarity about the role of human activities in climate change when it released its Fifth Assessment Report. It is categorical in its conclusion: climate change is real and human activities are the main cause.

Fifth Assessment Report The report provides a comprehensive assessment of sea level rise, and its causes, over the past few decades.

It also estimates cumulative CO2 emissions since pre-industrial times and provides a CO2 budget for future emissions to limit warming to less than 2°C. About half of this maximum amount was already emitted by 2011. The report found that:

• From 1880 to 2012, the average global temperature increased by 0.85°C.

• Oceans have warmed, the amounts of snow and ice have diminished and the sea level has risen. From 1901 to 2010, the global average sea level rose by 19 cm as oceans expanded due to warming and ice melted. The sea ice extent in the Arctic has shrunk in every successive decade since 1979, with 1.07 × 106 km² of ice loss per decade.

• Given current concentrations and ongoing emissions of greenhouse gases, it is likely that by the end of this century global mean temperature will continue to rise above the pre-industrial level. The world’s oceans will warm and ice melt will continue. Average sea level rise is predicted to be 24–30 cm by 2065 and 40–63 cm by 2100 relative to the reference period of 1986–2005. Most aspects of climate change will persist for many centuries, even if emissions are stopped. There is alarming evidence that important tipping points, leading to irreversible changes in major ecosystems and the planetary climate system, may already have been reached or passed. Ecosystems as diverse as the Amazon rainforest and the Arctic tundra, may be approaching thresholds of dramatic change through warming and drying. Mountain glaciers are in alarming retreat and the downstream effects of reduced water supply in the driest months will have repercussions that transcend generations.

Global Warming of 1.5°C In October 2018 the IPCC issued a special report on the impacts of global warming of 1.5°C, finding that limiting global warming to 1.5°C would require rapid, far-reaching and unprecedented changes in all aspects of society. With clear benefits to people and natural ecosystems, the report found that limiting global warming to 1.5°C compared to 2°C could go hand in hand with ensuring a more sustainable and equitable society. While previous estimates focused on estimating the damage if average temperatures were to rise by 2°C, this report shows that many of the adverse impacts of climate change will come at the 1.5°C mark.

The report also highlights a number of climate change impacts that could be avoided by limiting global warming to 1.5ºC compared to 2ºC, or more. For instance, by 2100, global sea level rise would be 10 cm lower with global warming of 1.5°C compared with 2°C. The likelihood of an Arctic Ocean free of sea ice in summer would be once per century with global warming of 1.5°C, compared with at least once per decade with 2°C. Coral reefs would decline by 70-90 percent with global warming of 1.5°C, whereas virtually all (> 99 percent) would be lost with 2ºC.

The report finds that limiting global warming to 1.5°C would require “rapid and far-reaching” transitions in land, energy, industry, buildings, transport, and cities. Global net human-caused emissions of carbon dioxide (CO2) would need to fall by about 45 percent from 2010 levels by 2030, reaching ‘net zero’ around 2050. This means that any remaining emissions would need to be balanced by removing CO2 from the air.

United Nations legal instruments

United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change The UN family is at the forefront of the effort to save our planet. In 1992, its “Earth Summit” produced the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) as a first step in addressing the climate change problem. Today, it has near-universal membership. The 197 countries that have ratified the Convention are Parties to the Convention. The ultimate aim of the Convention is to prevent “dangerous” human interference with the climate system.

Kyoto Protocol By 1995, countries launched negotiations to strengthen the global response to climate change, and, two years later, adopted the Kyoto Protocol. The Kyoto Protocol legally binds developed country Parties to emission reduction targets. The Protocol’s first commitment period started in 2008 and ended in 2012. The second commitment period began on 1 January 2013 and will end in 2020. There are now 197 Parties to the Convention and 192 Parties to the Kyoto Protocol.

Paris Agreement At the 21st Conference of the Parties in Paris in 2015, Parties to the UNFCCC reached a landmark agreement to combat climate change and to accelerate and intensify the actions and investments needed for a sustainable low carbon future. The Paris Agreement builds upon the Convention and – for the first time – brings all nations into a common cause to undertake ambitious efforts to combat climate change and adapt to its effects, with enhanced support to assist developing countries to do so. As such, it charts a new course in the global climate effort.

The Paris Agreement’s central aim is to strengthen the global response to the threat of climate change by keeping the global temperature rise this century well below 2 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels and to pursue efforts to limit the temperature increase even further to 1.5 degrees Celsius.

On Earth Day, 22 April 2016, 175 world leaders signed the Paris Agreement at United Nations Headquarters in New York. This was by far the largest number of countries ever to sign an international agreement on a single day. There are now 186 countries that have ratified the Paris Agreement.

2019 Climate Action Summit On 23 September 2019, Secretary-General António Guterres convened a Climate Summit to bring world leaders of governments, the private sector and civil society together to support the multilateral process and to increase and accelerate climate action and ambition. He named Luis Alfonso de Alba, a former Mexican diplomat, as his Special Envoy to lead preparations. The Summit focused on key sectors where action can make the most difference—heavy industry, nature-based solutions, cities, energy, resilience, and climate finance. World leaders reported on what they are doing, and what more they intend to do when they convene in 2020 for the UN climate conference, where commitments will be renewed and may be increased. In closing the Climate Action Summit, the Secretary-General said “You have delivered a boost in momentum, cooperation and ambition. But we have a long way to go.”

“We need more concrete plans, more ambition from more countries and more businesses. We need all financial institutions, public and private, to choose, once and for all, the green economy.”

Nobel Peace Prize

In 2007, the Nobel Peace Prize was awarded jointly to former United States Vice-President Al Gore and the IPCC "for their efforts to build up and disseminate greater knowledge about man-made climate change, and to lay the foundations for the measures that are needed to counteract such change."

Over-harvesting facts for kids Kids Encyclopedia Facts

Atlantic cod stocks were severely overexploited in the 1970s and 1980s. This lead to their abrupt collapse in 1992. Over-harvesting means taking more from the land (or sea) than it can replace. It includes extreme farming, grazing, fishing, and using fresh water. Over-harvesting is harmful in the long term. Forests or wetlands are hard to replace. Damage to nature hurts animals and humans. Most wetlands are damaged by overuse as a source of drinking water, and are sometimes drained to make farmland or land for building. A thriving and diverse ecosystem is destroyed. Over-harvesting also applies to animals. Population numbers may drop as a result, and species may become extinct. Overfishing is a typical example. Nowadays, you can only fish, shoot deer or birds at certain times of the year. The season when they mate, reproduce and lay eggs or have the young protected. Areas of especial natural beauty or scientific interest are also protected. Taking bird eggs is also now against the law, at least in the United Kingdom. One thing which acts against conservation is the overpopulation of the world. The greatest single reason why the world loses forests is that some people want the land for other purposes. A few people gain, but everyone shares the cost. This is called the tragedy of the commons. Images for kids

▪ Cows on Selsley Common. The tragedy of the commons is a useful parable for understanding how overexploitation can occur

▪ The rich diversity of marine life inhabiting coral reefs attracts bioprospectors. Many coral reefs are overexploited; threats include coral mining, cyanide and blast fishing, and overfishing in general.

▪ It is not just humans that overexploit their resources. Overgrazing can occur naturally, caused by native fauna, as shown in the upper right.

▪ The Carolina parakeet was hunted to extinction.

▪ Overexploitation of groundwater from an aquifer can result in a peak water curve.

▪ Beech forest – Grib Skov, Denmark

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Overexploiting sea otters resulted in cascade effects which destroyed kelp forest ecosystems

3/26/2020 How does overfishing threaten coral reefs? National Ocean Service (/welcome.html) National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (http://www.noaa.gov) U.S. Department of Commerce (https://www.commerce.gov)

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How does overfishing threaten coral reefs?

Overfishing can deplete key reef species and damage coral habitat.

Coral reef fish are a significant food source for over a billion people worldwide. Many coastal and https://oceanservice.noaa.gov/facts/coral-overfishing.html 1/1 Overexploitation Wildlife at Risk

Fish and other aquatic species: As fishing gear and boats have improved, the fishing industry has become very efficient at harvesting fish and shellfish. The industrialization of the fishing industry and the increasing global demand for seafood have people taking more fish from oceans, lakes and rivers than is sustainable. Prized fish, such as swordfish, cod and tuna, have undergone dramatic declines. In the Great Lakes, overfishing has caused whitefish, walleye, and sturgeon populations to decline. Beyond their role in the food supply, freshwater and marine fish are also trapped for the aquarium trade and fished for sport.

Birds: Certain species of birds are collected or hunted for sport, food, and the cage-bird pet trade (parrots and songbirds are prized as pets). Millions of birds are traded internationally each year. Close to 30 percent of globally threatened birds are affected by overexploitation, particularly parrots, pigeons, and pheasants. The Carolina parakeet was once the only species of parrot in the U.S., but it was hunted to extinction early in the last century for food, to protect crops and for its feathers (which adorned ladies’ hats).

Mammals: People have always hunted mammal species—for fur, food, sport, and for their horns or antlers. Mammals are also trapped for the pet trade, zoos, and biomedical research. Today illegal hunting still threatens many species, especially large mammals such as tigers, rhinoceros, bears, and primates, whose body parts are highly valued in some parts of the world for traditional medicine.

Amphibians: Members of the amphibian class are collected and shipped all over the world for the pet trade, medicine, education (frogs are dissected in many biology classes), scientific research, and for food (frog legs are a delicacy in many parts of the world). The California red-legged frog, now a federally protected endangered species, was over hunted for food and its numbers seriously depleted during the Gold Rush in the area around San Francisco.

Reptiles: Wanted for their skins or shells, their eggs, meat, and for the pet trade, reptiles are harvested and traded around the world. Overharvesting of the Kemp’s ridley sea turtle’s eggs nearly led to its extinction, and today it is still an endangered species. In the U.S., box turtles are being collected at unsustainable levels for the overseas pet trade. Some reptile skins—such as crocodile, python, and monitor lizard— are highly prized as exotic leathers.

Invertebrates: At least 75 percent of all known animal species are invertebrates. Insects, oysters, octopus, crayfish, sea stars, scorpions, crabs, and sponges are all kinds of this animal class. Today many invertebrates—particularly marine invertebrates—are at risk from overharvesting. Chesapeake Bay oysters, once an important part of the Bay economy, are now in decline. Horseshoe crabs, whose eggs provide food for migratory birds, fish and other organisms, are being harvested as bait for eel and whelk fishing. Octopus are suffering declines worldwide due to heavy fishing pressure. Shells and corals are collected for ornaments and jewelry.

Plants: The Earth's plants are vital to our survival and are the foundation of most ecosystems. People harvest plants for food, medicine, building materials, and raw materials to make other products. But we are taking too many plants from the wild. Some plants, such as orchids, are so prized by collectors that they are now endangered and legally protected from poaching by international law. Some medicinal plants, such as American ginseng, have also been so enthusiastically collected that it is now very hard to find them in the wild. A number of tree species that are prized for their wood, such as mahogany, are under threat because of overharvesting.

UN Report: Nature’s Dangerous Decline ‘Unprecedented’; Species Extinction Rates ‘Accelerating’ Current global response insufficient; ‘Transformative changes’ needed to restore and protect nature; Opposition from vested interests can be overcome for public good Most comprehensive assessment of its kind; 1,000,000 species threatened with extinction

PARIS, 6 May – Nature is declining globally at rates unprecedented in human history – and the rate of species extinctions is accelerating, with grave impacts on people around the world now likely, warns a landmark new report from the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES), the summary of which was approved at the 7th session of the IPBES Plenary, meeting last week (29 April – 4 May) in Paris.

“The overwhelming evidence of the IPBES Global Assessment, from a wide range of different fields of knowledge, presents an ominous picture,” said IPBES Chair, Sir Robert Watson. “The health of ecosystems on which we and all other species depend is deteriorating more rapidly than ever. We are eroding the very foundations of our economies, livelihoods, food security, health and quality of life worldwide.”

“The Report also tells us that it is not too late to make a difference, but only if we start now at every level from local to global,” he said. “Through ‘transformative change’, nature can still be conserved, restored and used sustainably – this is also key to meeting most other global goals. By transformative change, we mean a fundamental, system-wide reorganization across technological, economic and social factors, including paradigms, goals and values.”

“The member States of IPBES Plenary have now acknowledged that, by its very nature, transformative change can expect opposition from those with interests vested in the status quo, but also that such opposition can be overcome for the broader public good,” Watson said.

The IPBES Global Assessment Report on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services is the most comprehensive ever completed. It is the first intergovernmental Report of its kind and builds on the landmark Millennium Ecosystem Assessment of 2005, introducing innovative ways of evaluating evidence.

Compiled by 145 expert authors from 50 countries over the past three years, with inputs from another 310 contributing authors, the Report assesses changes over the past five decades, providing a comprehensive picture of the relationship between economic development pathways and their impacts on nature. It also offers a range of possible scenarios for the coming decades.

Based on the systematic review of about 15,000 scientific and government sources, the Report also draws (for the first time ever at this scale) on indigenous and local knowledge, particularly addressing issues relevant to Indigenous Peoples and Local Communities.

“Biodiversity and nature’s contributions to people are our common heritage and humanity’s most important life- supporting ‘safety net’. But our safety net is stretched almost to breaking point,” said Prof. Sandra Díaz (Argentina), who co-chaired the Assessment with Prof. Josef Settele (Germany) and Prof. Eduardo S. Brondízio (Brazil and USA).

“The diversity within species, between species and of ecosystems, as well as many fundamental contributions we derive from nature, are declining fast, although we still have the means to ensure a sustainable future for people and the planet.” The Report finds that around 1 million animal and plant species are now threatened with extinction, many within decades, more than ever before in human history. The average abundance of native species in most major land-based habitats has fallen by at least 20%, mostly since 1900. More than 40% of amphibian species, almost 33% of reef-forming corals and more than a third of all marine mammals are threatened. The picture is less clear for insect species, but available evidence supports a tentative estimate of 10% being threatened. At least 680 vertebrate species had been driven to extinction since the 16th century and more than 9% of all domesticated breeds of mammals used for food and agriculture had become extinct by 2016, with at least 1,000 more breeds still threatened.

“Ecosystems, species, wild populations, local varieties and breeds of domesticated plants and animals are shrinking, deteriorating or vanishing. The essential, interconnected web of life on Earth is getting smaller and increasingly frayed,” said Prof. Settele. “This loss is a direct result of human activity and constitutes a direct threat to human well-being in all regions of the world.”

To increase the policy-relevance of the Report, the assessment’s authors have ranked, for the first time at this scale and based on a thorough analysis of the available evidence, the five direct drivers of change in nature with the largest relative global impacts so far. These culprits are, in descending order: (1) changes in land and sea use; (2) direct exploitation of organisms; (3) climate change; (4) pollution and (5) invasive alien species.

The Report notes that, since 1980, greenhouse gas emissions have doubled, raising average global temperatures by at least 0.7 degrees Celsius – with climate change already impacting nature from the level of ecosystems to that of genetics – impacts expected to increase over the coming decades, in some cases surpassing the impact of land and sea use change and other drivers.

Despite progress to conserve nature and implement policies, the Report also finds that global goals for conserving and sustainably using nature and achieving sustainability cannot be met by current trajectories, and goals for 2030 and beyond may only be achieved through transformative changes across economic, social, political and technological factors. With good progress on components of only four of the 20 Aichi Biodiversity Targets, it is likely that most will be missed by the 2020 deadline. Current negative trends in biodiversity and ecosystems will undermine progress towards 80% (35 out of 44) of the assessed targets of the Sustainable Development Goals, related to poverty, hunger, health, water, cities, climate, oceans and land (SDGs 1, 2, 3, 6, 11, 13, 14 and 15). Loss of biodiversity is therefore shown to be not only an environmental issue, but also a developmental, economic, security, social and moral issue as well.

“To better understand and, more importantly, to address the main causes of damage to biodiversity and nature’s contributions to people, we need to understand the history and global interconnection of complex demographic and economic indirect drivers of change, as well as the social values that underpin them,” said Prof. Brondízio. “Key indirect drivers include increased population and per capita consumption; technological innovation, which in some cases has lowered and in other cases increased the damage to nature; and, critically, issues of governance and accountability. A pattern that emerges is one of global interconnectivity and ‘telecoupling’ – with resource extraction and production often occurring in one part of the world to satisfy the needs of distant consumers in other regions.”

Other notable findings of the Report include:

• Three-quarters of the land-based environment and about 66% of the marine environment have been significantly altered by human actions. On average these trends have been less severe or avoided in areas held or managed by Indigenous Peoples and Local Communities. • More than a third of the world’s land surface and nearly 75% of freshwater resources are now devoted to crop or livestock production. • The value of agricultural crop production has increased by about 300% since 1970, raw timber harvest has risen by 45% and approximately 60 billion tons of renewable and nonrenewable resources are now extracted globally every year – having nearly doubled since 1980. • Land degradation has reduced the productivity of 23% of the global land surface, up to US$577 billion in annual global crops are at risk from pollinator loss and 100-300 million people are at increased risk of floods and hurricanes because of loss of coastal habitats and protection. • In 2015, 33% of marine fish stocks were being harvested at unsustainable levels; 60% were maximally sustainably fished, with just 7% harvested at levels lower than what can be sustainably fished. • Urban areas have more than doubled since 1992. • Plastic pollution has increased tenfold since 1980, 300-400 million tons of heavy metals, solvents, toxic sludge and other wastes from industrial facilities are dumped annually into the world’s waters, and fertilizers entering coastal ecosystems have produced more than 400 ocean ‘dead zones’, totalling more than 245,000 km2 (591-595) – a combined area greater than that of the United Kingdom. • Negative trends in nature will continue to 2050 and beyond in all of the policy scenarios explored in the Report, except those that include transformative change – due to the projected impacts of increasing land-use change, exploitation of organisms and climate change, although with significant differences between regions.

The Report also presents a wide range of illustrative actions for sustainability and pathways for achieving them across and between sectors such as agriculture, forestry, marine systems, freshwater systems, urban areas, energy, finance and many others. It highlights the importance of, among others, adopting integrated management and cross-sectoral approaches that take into account the trade-offs of food and energy production, infrastructure, freshwater and coastal management, and biodiversity conservation.

Also identified as a key element of more sustainable future policies is the evolution of global financial and economic systems to build a global sustainable economy, steering away from the current limited paradigm of economic growth.

“IPBES presents the authoritative science, knowledge and the policy options to decision-makers for their consideration,” said IPBES Executive Secretary, Dr. Anne Larigauderie. “We thank the hundreds of experts, from around the world, who have volunteered their time and knowledge to help address the loss of species, ecosystems and genetic diversity – a truly global and generational threat to human well-being.”