Tag Archives: Natural resource management

Local weather-fueled wildfires take toll on tropical Pacific isles

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WAIMEA, Hawaii — A metallic roof sits atop the burned stays of a homestead on the once-lush slopes of Hawaii’s Mauna Kea — a dormant volcano and the state’s tallest peak — charred vehicles and bikes strewn about as wind-whipped sand and ash blast the scorched panorama.

Generations of Kumu Micah Kamohoalii’s household have lived on these lands reserved for Native Hawaiians, and his cousin owns this home destroyed by the state’s largest-ever wildfire.

“I’ve by no means seen a hearth this huge,” Kamohoalii stated. “Waimea has had fires, lots of them earlier than and a few perhaps just a few hundred acres, however not this dimension.”

The hearth has burned greater than 70 sq. miles (181 sq. kilometers) within the two weeks it has been going. But it surely wasn’t the primary time this space has burned, and will not be the final. Like many islands within the Pacific, Hawaii’s dry seasons are getting extra excessive with local weather change.

“Everybody is aware of Waimea to be the pasturelands and to be all of the inexperienced rolling hills. And so after I was younger, all of this was at all times inexperienced,” Kamohoalii stated. “Within the final 10 to 15 years, it has been actually, actually dry.”

Enormous wildfires spotlight the risks of local weather change-related warmth and drought for a lot of communities all through the U.S. West and different hotspots around the globe. However specialists say comparatively small fires on usually moist, tropical islands within the Pacific are additionally on the rise, making a cycle of ecological injury that impacts very important and restricted sources for tens of millions of residents.

From Micronesia to Hawaii, wildfires have been a rising downside for many years. With scarce funding to stop and suppress these fires, island communities have struggled to deal with the issue.

“On tropical islands, fires have a singular set of impacts,” stated Clay Trauernicht, an ecosystems and wildfire researcher on the College of Hawaii. “At first, fires had been very uncommon previous to human arrival on any Pacific island. The vegetation, the native ecosystems, actually advanced within the absence of frequent fires. And so whenever you do get these fires, they have an inclination to form of wreak havoc.”

But it surely’s not simply burnt land that’s affected. Fires on islands hurt environments from the highest of mountains to beneath the ocean’s floor.

“As soon as a hearth happens, what you’re doing is eradicating vegetation,” Trauernicht stated. “And we regularly get heavy rainfall occasions. All of that uncovered soil will get carried downstream and now we have these direct impacts of abrasion, sedimentation on our marine ecosystems. So it actually hammers our coral reefs as properly.”

Pacific island reefs help native meals manufacturing, create limitations to giant storm surges and are a vital a part of tourism that retains many islands working.

The moist season on tropical islands additionally causes fire-adapted grasses to develop tall and thick, constructing gasoline for the following summer season’s wildfires.

“Guinea grass grows six inches a day in optimum situations and a six-foot tall patch of grass can throw 20-foot flame lengths,” stated Michael Walker, Hawaii’s state fireplace safety forester. “So what now we have listed below are actually fast-moving, very popular, very harmful fires.”

Walker stated such non-native grasses which have proliferated in Hawaii are tailored to fireplace, however native species and shrubs should not.

“Whereas (these wildfires) might not evaluate to the scale and length of what of us have within the western United States, we burn a good portion of our lands yearly due to these grass fires, they usually’re altering our pure ecosystems and changing forests to grass,” he stated.

The newest wildfire on Hawaii’s Huge Island burned about 1% of the state’s complete land, and different islands within the Pacific resembling Palau, Saipan and Guam burn much more — as much as 10% in extreme fireplace years.

On common, Guam has practically 700 wildfires a 12 months, Palau about 175 and Saipan about 20, in accordance with knowledge from 2018.

Guam, like many different locations, has lengthy used fireplace as a software. Farmers generally use it to clear fields and hunters have been identified to burn areas whereas poaching.

The U.S. territory’s forestry chief Christine Camacho Fejeran stated fires on the island are largely brought on by arson. “So all of Guam’s wildfires are human-caused points, whether or not it’s an intentional or an escaped yard fireplace or one other (trigger),” she stated.

On common, Fejeran stated, 6,000 to 7,000 acres (2,430 to 2,830 hectares) of the island burns annually, amounting to about 5% of its land.

Whereas no properties have been misplaced to latest wildfires on Guam, Fejeran believes that pattern will come to an finish — until extra is completed to fight the fires.

The island has made some modifications in fireplace laws, administration, schooling and enforcement. Arson has develop into a rechargeable offense, however Fejeran says enforcement stays an impediment within the tight-knit group.

Again in Hawaii, final week’s blaze destroyed three properties, however the fireplace threatened many extra.

Mikiala Model, who has lived for twenty years on a 50-acre homestead, watched as flames got here inside just a few hundred yards (meters) of her home.

As the hearth grew nearer, she noticed firefighters, neighbors and the Nationwide Guard racing into her rural neighborhood to struggle it. She needed to evacuate her beloved dwelling twice in lower than 24 hours.

“After all it was scary,” she stated. “However I had religion that the sturdy, the courageous and the gifted, and together with nature and Akua, which is our identify for the common spirit, would take care.”

Demonstrating the tenacity of many Native Hawaiians in her farming and ranching group, Model stated, “I solely fear about what I’ve management over.”

Down the mountain in Waikoloa Village, a group of about 7,000, Linda Hunt was additionally compelled to evacuate. She works at a horse secure and scrambled to avoid wasting the animals as flames whipped nearer.

“We solely have one and a half roads to get out — you might have the principle highway after which you might have the emergency entry,” Hunt stated of a slender dust highway. “Everyone was making an attempt to evacuate, there was quite a lot of confusion.”

The hearth was finally put out simply wanting the densely populated neighborhood, however had flames reached the properties, it might have been disastrous on the parched panorama.

“When you might have excessive winds like we get right here, it is tough irrespective of how huge your fireplace break is, it may blow proper via,” Hunt stated.

Whereas fires have gotten tougher to struggle due to dry and sizzling situations related to local weather change, specialists say the Pacific islands nonetheless can assist forestall these blazes from inflicting ecological injury and property losses.

“Hearth presents a reasonably fascinating element of form of all these local weather change impacts that we’re coping with within the sense that they’re manageable,” stated Trauernicht, the College of Hawaii wildfire skilled.

Along with schooling and arson prevention, he stated, land use — resembling grazing practices and reforestation that scale back risky grasses — might assist.

“It is inside our management, probably, to cut back the impacts that we’re seeing with fires,” Trauernicht stated. “Each by way of forest loss in addition to the impacts on coral reefs.”

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Related Press author Victoria Milko reported from Jakarta.

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On Twitter comply with Caleb Jones: @CalebAP and Victoria Milko: @TheVMilko

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The Related Press Well being and Science Division receives help from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute’s Division of Science Training. The AP is solely accountable for all content material.

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BP oil spill cash rebuilds eroded Louisiana pelican island

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A Louisiana island that provides critical nesting habitat for pelicans and other seabirds is being restored to nearly its former size after decades of erosion and a crippling 2010 oil spill

By

JANET McCONNAUGHEY Associated Press

February 3, 2020, 5:56 PM

4 min read

NEW ORLEANS —
A Louisiana island that provides a crucial nesting ground for pelicans and other seabirds is being restored to nearly its former size after decades of coastal erosion and the devastating blow of an offshore oil spill 10 years ago.

About 6,500 brown pelicans and 3,000 smaller seabirds cram their nests every summer onto Queen Bess Island, which shrank from 45 acres (18 hectares) in 1956 to about 5 acres (2 hectares) by 2010, when the Deepwater Horizon spill fouled its beaches with oily gunk.

Though barely a blip of an island off the Gulf of Mexico in Barataria Bay, Queen Bess plays an outsize role as one of Louisiana’s largest rookeries for brown pelicans, supplying prime real estate for up to a fifth of the state’s nests. It’s also where the pelican, the Louisiana state bird, was reintroduced in the 1960s after pesticides had killed off the entire population.

Loss of coastal wetlands and other problems have crowded the big birds into far fewer colonies than they had two decades ago, according to Todd Baker, the biologist supervising restoration work for the Louisiana Department of Wildlife and Fisheries. The number of colonies has fallen 54 percent since 2010, he said.

The $18 million to restore Queen Bess Island and funds for future monitoring and upkeep flow from a $20 billion settlement that the federal government and the five Gulf Coast states reached with energy giant BP PLC for environmental damage from the 2010 spill.

The offshore explosion and fire that year on BP’s leased drilling rig killed 11 people. The well spewed more than 100 million gallons (378 million liters) of oil into the water over 87 days.

When the oil reached the island about 45 miles (72 kilometers) south of New Orleans, brown pelicans and other birds could be seen struggling, their wings weighed down by the black muck. About 1,000 died.

“This is the first time we’ve done any really large-scale restoration specifically for birds. And I can’t wait to see the results” as birds arrive, Baker said.

Under the restoration project, contractors for Louisiana’s Coastal Protection and Restoration Authority have dredged up Mississippi River sand and pumped it inside two rock outlines. Those outlines were nearly all that remained of failed attempts in the 1990s to rebuild the island using silt dredged nearby. This time around they’re using barges to bring in the more stable sand. The authority also has built a line of rock breakwaters 75 to 95 feet (23 to 29 meters) from shore to slow erosion and provide calm water for young birds.

Once a mere strip of land, the island now covers 37 acres (15 hectares), providing much-needed space for the increasingly cramped birds. Most of the island is being restored as a pelican habitat, with 7 acres (2.8 hectares) for skimmers, terns and other birds that nest on rocks.

In recent years, Baker said, nests have been so jammed “you can’t hardly step on land without touching a nest.”

He said the crowding has made the island’s woody plants look like apartment houses, with nest above nest above nest: perhaps a laughing gull on the ground, an egret or roseate spoonbill in middle branches and a brown pelican nest at the top.

“It was cool to look at but not necessarily good for those birds,” Baker said.

In an assist to the birds, The Louisiana Wildlife and Fisheries Commission designated the island a wildlife refuge in November. The commission is taking comments on rules that, among other things, forbid people from stepping on the island or fishing inside the breakwaters for eight months of the year.

Restoration work should be completed by a Feb. 15 deadline, Baker said. He added that remaining work includes creating ramps on which young birds that still can’t fly can walk in and out of the water.

Contractors also will plant about 24,000 woody plants for species such as night herons and egrets, as well as pelicans, to build their nests. Those are essentially 3-foot-high (1-meter-high) sticks, Baker said. He noted that while pelicans prefer nesting on scrub-shrubs, they can also build nests on grass or even bare ground. The ground-nesting terns, skimmers and gulls will probably use the expanses of bare sand between the plants as well as the rocky area created for them, he said.

Most important for Baker: Will pelicans return to the island where they built nests or were hatched? Five hundred were banded last year to help him and other conservationists answer that question.

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Dutch reinforce main dike as seas rise, local weather modifications

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Rising up in a skinny line by way of the waters separating the provinces of North Holland and Friesland, the 87-year-old Afsluitdijk is among the low-lying Netherlands’ key defenses in opposition to its historical enemy, the ocean. With local weather change bringing extra highly effective storms and rising sea ranges , the dike is getting a significant makeover.

The Dutch authorities has launched into a future-proofing venture to beef up the enduring 32-kilometer (20-mile) dam. Work is already underway and is predicted to proceed till 2023.

Simply what the Afsluitdijk and the remainder of the world’s coastal areas must endure within the coming a long time can be outlined this week in a brand new United Nations scientific report on the affect of local weather change on ice and oceans.

The Dutch, whose low-lying nation is crisscrossed by rivers and bordered by the ocean, have been battling with water for hundreds of years. That problem will solely develop as hotter temperatures trigger sea ranges to rise. With that in thoughts, the federal government this yr established a “information program on rising sea ranges” that goals to feed experience into the nation’s ongoing program of constructing and sustaining its water defenses.

“The Netherlands is at present the most secure delta on the planet,” the federal government stated, asserting the brand new program. “We need to maintain it that approach.”

Boris Teunis, an skilled on emergency water administration with the Dutch water company Rijkswaterstaat, stated in a current interview that sea ranges have been rising for years “however what we’re worrying about is that if that’s going to speed up.”

Engineers are strengthening the Afsluitdijk, together with laying hundreds of custom-made concrete blocks and elevating elements of it. They’re additionally enhancing the freeway that runs over the slim strip of artificial land which lies between the shallow Wadden Sea and the Ijsselmeer inland sea and which, regardless of its identify, is technically a dam slightly than a dike as a result of it separates water from water.

The chopping fringe of the design work for the strengthening will not be being finished at a seaside or estuary, however in a protracted wave tank referred to as the flume in an industrial space of Delft, the historic metropolis greatest identified for its delicate blue and white china and painter Johannes Vermeer.

Engineers constructed a scale mannequin of a cross part of the Afsluitdijk within the tank and are pounding it with waves that they are saying ought to happen solely as soon as each 10,000 years. The purpose is to ensure the brand new design can survive the damaging energy of such a storm.

Mark Klein Breteler, a dike skilled and venture supervisor at Deltares, the water analysis heart that constructed and makes use of the flume, stated the brand new design of the Afsluitdijk must deal with all the things that local weather change throws at it.

“We learn about sea stage rise but additionally the storminess of this space is growing, so wind speeds are larger and we get bigger waves,” he stated.

This type of innovation and the fixed care wanted to take care of the Netherland’s hundreds of miles of dikes and levees doesn’t come low cost. The federal government has earmarked practically 18 billion euros ($20 billion) to fund such initiatives for the interval from 2020-2033.

However the return on that funding is extra than simply dry ft for the 17 million individuals who stay within the Netherlands. An trade group estimated that the nation’s water sector exports had been price 7.6 billion euros ($8.three billion) in 2018, because the Dutch promote their experience to different low-lying international locations and cities around the globe.

“The key problem is to take water and the altering local weather into consideration in all spatial planning” within the Netherlands, Delta Commissioner Peter Glas wrote in a report this month.

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Corder reported from The Hague.

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For extra Related Press tales about local weather change, go to https://www.apnews.com/Local weather

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Scientists find flaws in plan to lift US wolf protections

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Scientists tasked with reviewing government plans to lift protections for gray wolves across most of the U.S. said in a report released Friday that the proposal has numerous factual errors and other problems.

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The five-member scientific panel’s conclusions were detailed in a 245-page report delivered to the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service.

One reviewer said the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service appeared to have come to a pre-determined conclusion, not supported by its own science, that wolves should come off the endangered species list.

“It looks like they decided to delist and then they compiled all the evidence that they thought supported that decision. It simply doesn’t support the decision,” said Adrian Treves, an environmental studies professor at the University of Wisconsin.

Treves said a chief concern is poaching: Without protections, illegal killings of wolves could rise, he said.

The findings could undercut the government’s contention that gray wolves across the Lower 48 have recovered from near extermination.

Federal officials have been under increasing pressure to put wolves under state management, which is already the case in parts of the Northern Rockies where hunting and trapping of the animals is allowed.

Prohibitions on hunting elsewhere have fueled resentment against wolves among livestock owners who must deal with attacks by the predators. Also, some hunters see wolves as competition for big game animals.

After being nearly wiped out in the Lower 48 early last century, more than 6,000 gray wolves now live in portions of nine states. The decades-long, government-sponsored recovery effort for the animals has cost roughly $160 million.

Yet gray wolves remain absent from most of their historical range. Critics of lifting protections say the move would be premature and worry that more hunting will reverse the species’ rebound.

Wildlife service spokeswoman Vanessa Kauffman said officials were still going over the scientific report and had no immediate response.

Members of the review panel questioned the agency’s treatment of a basic issue: whether gray wolves in the Lower 48 states are biologically the same or consist of more than one species.

Daniel MacNulty, an associate professor at Utah State University, said the proposed rule had “demonstrable errors of fact, interpretation, and logic” and its description of where wolves presently range is fuzzy.

Five years ago, a similar report helped convince federal officials to temporarily shelve plans to lift wolf protections. That report, too, questioned the science used by federal officials.

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Flesher reported from Traverse City, Michigan.

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Follow Matthew Brown at https://twitter.com/matthewbrownap and John Flesher at http://www.twitter.com/johnflesher



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US agency considers more visitors to popular hiking spot

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One of the most exclusive and dramatic hiking spots in the southwestern United States could see bigger crowds under a new proposal unveiled Wednesday.

The Bureau of Land Management is weighing increasing its daily visitor limits from 20 to 96 people a day at The Wave, a popular rock formation near the Utah-Arizona border.

A 6-mile (9.5-kilometer) round trip hike through tall sandstone buttes and sage brush is required to get to the Wave, a wide, sloping basin of searing reds, oranges and yellows in the Vermilion Cliffs National Monument.

The agency is asking for public comment and changes could be implemented as soon as October, agency official Mike Herder said.

Applications to hike The Wave have drastically increased over the past five years as the trail’s colorful, contoured landscape becomes increasingly well-known.

Visitors compete for permits in a monthly online lottery and at daily walk-in drawings at the Kanab visitor center in southern Utah. Less than 5% of the 150,000 people who wanted to hike the trail last year were actually able to do it, according to federal data.

The limit is designed to protect the delicate sandstone environment and create a peaceful solitude, Herder said.

Increasing the number of visitors would harshly impact The Wave’s fragile desert landscape and hikers’ experience, said Taylor McKinnon, a senior campaigner with the Center for Biological Diversity in northern Arizona.

“It could mean more people in your photographs, more people walking off trail onto sensitive soil, more wildlife disruption,” he said. “The agency needs to make sure any user increase is compatible with environmental protection.”

Herder said the move, which has been discussed for over a year, is aimed at giving more people an opportunity to do the hike. During peak season, between the spring and the fall, the office will receive as many as 400 requests a day from people all over the world, he said.

Hiker Beckie Lambert, a medical assistant from Colorado, was denied a permit to hike The Wave in January. She’s excited about the plan to increase accessibility for avid hikers like her, but is concerned that more hikers could be risky, she said.

“It’s a delicate wilderness area, quadrupling the number of people leads to more trash, more monitoring,” she said.

The agency is seeking feedback on how to best navigate safety and environmental concerns related to the proposal, Herbert said. He said agency officials have already discussed adding additional restrooms, parking and other resources outside of the trailhead to accommodate more people.

It’s said to be one of the most photographed spots in North America, but The Wave isn’t without dangers. In August, a Belgian man died from heat exhaustion after getting lost on the trail. There was a trio of deaths at The Wave in 2013, after which the agency posted new trailhead signs, and safety warnings.

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