Category: Endangered Species

Red List calls out ‘perfect storm of unsustainable human activity decimating marine life’

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Turtle at Sea. Photo by Jeremy Bishop

“As the world looks to the ongoing U.N. Biodiversity Conference to set the course for nature recovery, we simply cannot afford to fail,” said the head of the International Union for Conservation of Nature.

By Jessica Corbett, Common Dreams

During the United Nations biodiversity summit in Montreal, an international conversation group on Friday highlighted how humanity is dangerously failing marine life with illegal and unsustainable fishing, pollution from agricultural and industrial runoff, and activities that drive up global temperatures.

The International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) Red List of Threatened Species now features 150,388 species, 42,108 of which face possible extinction. Of the 17,903 marine animals and plants on the list, more than 1,550 are at risk.

“Today’s IUCN Red List update reveals a perfect storm of unsustainable human activity decimating marine life around the globe. As the world looks to the ongoing U.N. Biodiversity Conference to set the course for nature recovery, we simply cannot afford to fail,” Bruno Oberle, the group’s director general, warned Friday. “We urgently need to address the linked climate and biodiversity crises, with profound changes to our economic systems, or we risk losing the crucial benefits the oceans provide us with.”

The primary aim of the 15th Conference of the Parties (COP15) of the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD)—which is hosted by China but kicked off earlier in Canada this week due to Covid-19 restrictions—is the development of post-2020 global biodiversity framework (GBF).

A top priority for many parties to the treaty—along with the United States, which has failed to ratify the CBD over the past three decades but is still participating in the summit—is to protect 30% of lands and waters by 2030. However, as activists and Indigenous leaders from around the world have noted, there are serious human rights concerns regarding implementation of the 30×30 goal.

COP15 comes after the fifth round of discussions about establishing a U.N. treaty for the high seas, or the two-thirds of oceans outside territorial waters. Those August talks failed to produce an agreement—which, as Laura Meller of Greenpeace’s Protect the Oceans campaign warned at the time, “jeopardizes the livelihoods and food security of billions of people around the world.”

“While progress has been made, particularly on ocean sanctuaries, members of the High Ambition Coalition and countries like the USA have moved too slowly to find compromises, despite their commitments,” Meller continued. “Time has run out. Further delay means ocean destruction. We are sad and disappointed. While countries continue to talk, the oceans and all those who rely on them will suffer.”

Similarly, urgent warnings came with the update Friday. Ashleigh McGovern, vice president of the Center for Oceans at Conservation International, said that “with this devastating IUCN Red List update on the status of marine species, it is clear that business as usual is no longer an option.”

“Human activity has had devastating effects on marine ecosystems and biodiversity, but it can also be harnessed to drive action as a matter of survival, equity, and climate justice,” she added. “If we are to secure a new future for the world’s oceans and the essential biodiversity they harbor, we must act now.”

Jon Paul Rodríguez, chair of the IUCN Species Survival Commission (SSC), pointed out that “most of the Earth’s biosphere, 99% of all livable space on our planet, is underwater.”

“Humanity acts as if oceans were inexhaustible, capable of sustaining infinite harvest of algae, animals, and plants for food and other products, able to transform vast quantities of sewage and other pollutants that we pour in coastal areas, and absorb the CO2 generated by land-use change and burning fossil fuel,” he said. “This Red List update brings to light new evidence of the multiple interacting threats to declining life in the sea.”

According to the IUCN Red List, 20 of the 54 abalone species—some of the world’s most expensive seafood—are threatened with extinction.

“Abalones reflect humanity’s disastrous guardianship of our oceans in microcosm: overfishing, pollution, disease, habitat loss, algal blooms, warming, and acidification, to name but a few threats. They really are the canary in the coal mine,” said Howard Peters, a member of the IUCN SSC Mollusc Specialist Group and research associate at the U.K.’s University of York who led the abalone assessment.

“The most immediate action people can take is to eat only farmed or sustainably sourced abalones. Enforcing fishery quotas and anti-poaching measures is also critical,” Peters noted. “However, we need to halt the changes to ocean chemistry and temperature to preserve marine life including abalone species over the long term.”

The update also raised the alarm about dugongs, particularly in East Africa and New Caledonia. Populations of the large herbivorous marine mammals are threatened by fishing gear, oil and gas exploration and production, chemical pollution, and the destruction of seagrasses they rely on for food.

“Strengthening community-led fisheries governance and expanding work opportunities beyond fishing are key in East Africa, where marine ecosystems are fundamental to people’s food security and livelihoods,” said Evan Trotzuk, who led the region’s assessment.

Another focus of the list is the pillar coral in the Caribbean, given that its population has shrunk by more than 80% across most of its range over the past three decades.

Noting that it is just one of 26 corals now listed as critically endangered in the Atlantic Ocean, Arizona State University associate professor Beth Polidoro, Red List coordinator for the IUCN SSC Coral Specialist Group, said that “these alarming results emphasize the urgency of global cooperation and action to address climate change impacts on ocean ecosystems.”

Amanda Vincent, chair of the IUCN SSC Marine Conservation Committee, declared that “the awful status of these species should shock us and engage us for urgent action.”

“These magical marine species are treasured wildlife, from the wonderful abalone to the charismatic dugong and the glorious pillar coral, and we should safeguard them accordingly,” she added. “It is vital that we manage fisheries properly, constrain climate change, and reverse habitat degradation.”

Nodding to the conference, Jane Smart, director of IUCN’s Science and Data Center, said the update reinforces her group’s “urgent call for a post-2020 global biodiversity framework that will be ambitious enough to cease destruction of our life support system and catalyze the necessary action and change to secure life on this planet.”

Biodiversity science–policy panel calls for broadening value-of-nature concepts in sustainable development

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Photo courtesy of Christian Ziegler., CC BY 2.5, via Wikimedia Commons
Photo courtesy of Christian Ziegler, CC BY 2.5, via Wikimedia Commons

Invaluables’ may have the highest value, according to Meine van Noordwijk

By Robert Finlayson, Forests News (CC BY-NC-SA 4.0)

The Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES) approved the Summary for Policy Makers of the Assessment Report on the Diverse Values and Valuation of Nature on 9 July 2022 in its ninth plenary meeting in Bonn, Germany.

“It is essential to understand the different ways in which people value nature, as well as the different ways in which these values can be measured,” said Ana Maria Hernández Salgar, IPBES chairperson. “The diversity of values of nature is often overlooked in policy decisions. Effective policy decisions about nature must be informed by the wide range of values and valuation methods, which makes the IPBES’ values assessment a vital scientific resource for policy and action for nature and human well-being.”

The Assessment Report comes at a critical time for life on Earth, which is fast losing its richness. The Report considers the trend to assign various values — including financial ones — to nature in an attempt to recognize the worth of natural ecosystems to human wellbeing.

“‘Invaluables’ may have the highest value,” said Meine van Noordwijk, CIFOR-ICRAF’s distinguished science fellow and one of 20 experts from around the world who functioned as ‘convening lead author’ for the Assessment. “For some types of decisions and decision-makers, it is relevant to use financial units to represent at least part of the value of nature to people but there is always a risk that such statements are misinterpreted.”

The Assessment has been a four-year journey, with many rounds of feedback, peer review and policy consultations. Detailed discussions by government delegates of the Summary Report will have increased the relevance of the key messages for discussion at global and national levels.

The word ‘value’ has many meanings, ranging from numbers through prices to non-negotiable core principles, he said. To value a tree, a forest or an agroforestry landscape means interacting with many perspectives. The more people involved, the wider the set of values that matters and which has to be taken into account.

This is of grave importance owing to the rapid and massive loss of species that is not confined to a particular group of drivers in one or two locations but is worldwide, all-embracing and under-recognized.

Consumers, for example, currently don’t pay a ‘true price’ for products sourced from nature (which is, ultimately, all products). Decisions by consumers and producers that are based on a narrow set of market values for nature are the hidden driver of the global biodiversity crisis. Bringing these values into the open can help people better understand the costs of over-exploitation and increase the likelihood of ensuring that the values — including the less tangible, non-financial ones — are honoured and preserved.

Importantly, the way the ‘conservation of nature’ is currently framed frequently ignores the values of people who live in any given ‘conservation’ area, with usually negative impact on the intended objectives for the conservation area. These people need to be recognised and respectfully included in decision processes.

Van Noordwijk noted that from examination of countries’ biodiversity reports and action plans drawn up in response to the UN Convention on Biological Diversity, it’s clear that less than 25% of the world’s governments are on track to integrate values of nature that are beyond those recognized by markets. But he also noted that current valuation studies rarely report on the uptake of such in decisions related to governments’ policies and programmes.

The six chapters of the Assessment Report make the point of distinguishing between ‘instrumental’ values — which are those that can be measured by the goods and services that nature, biodiversity or well-functioning ecosystems provide to people — and ‘relational’ values: those that may be equally important to people’s well-being in immaterial ways.

The types of values that are most effectively communicated depend on the audience and the context, meaning that communication is as important as the decisions themselves that are made by governments and others in relation to the conservation of biological diversity.

“Scientists and other people interested in the issue have to help decision-makers understand so that they can frame policies and actions that will be effective,” he said. “Particularly, drawing decision-makers’ attention to the fact that humans who depend most on an area considered worthy of conservation need to be fully involved in decisions regarding it and that the intangible values — such as climate regulation, maintenance of healthy ecosystems and the water cycle — need to be fully recognised.”

Van Noordwijk stressed that from a ‘forests, trees and agroforestry’ perspective, the international acceptance of the Assessment Report can help pursuit of a dual strategy of 1) clarifying the way ecosystem structures and functions contribute instrumental values to people locally, nationally and globally and, thus, the economic values that are at stake if the current trend of biodiversity loss continues, and which can be partially recovered through ‘restoration’ of degraded landscapes; and 2) engaging with stakeholders to appreciate, and recognize, the various relational values that matter to them.

“The latter can, at the very least, help in more effective communication,” he said, “not only in a language that people can understand but also in a language that speaks to their hearts.”

Around the world, examples abound of conflicts that might be reduced or completely eradicated if these points are better understood.

California court ruling opens door for protection of insects as endangered species

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Photo by Pixabay
Photo by Pixabay

By Liz Kimbrough, Mongabay (CC BY-NC-ND 4.0).

  • A court ruled this week that the California Endangered Species Act (CESA) can apply to invertebrates, including insects.

  • This means legal protections will be in place for four native, endangered bumblebee species in California.

  • The decision marks the end of a court battle between conservation groups and a consortium of large-scale industrial agricultural interests.

  • An estimated 28% of all bumblebees in North America are at risk of extinction, with consequences for ecosystems and crops, as one-third of food production depends on pollinators.

A California court has ruled that state legislation on endangered species can apply to invertebrates. The decision this week by the Third District Court of Appeal means insects, including four endangered native Californian bumblebee species and the monarch butterfly, will receive much-needed protection under the California Endangered Species Act.

“We are celebrating today’s decision that insects and other invertebrates are eligible for protection under CESA,” Sarina Jepsen, director of endangered species at the Xerces Society for Invertebrate Conservation, said in a press release. “The Court’s decision allows California to protect some of its most endangered pollinators, a step which will contribute to the resilience of the state’s native ecosystems and farms.”

In 2018, the Xerces Society, the Center for Food Safety (CFS), and Defenders of Wildlife petitioned the state of California to list four species of native bumblebees as endangered under CESA.

The California Fish and Game Commission voted to begin the process of listing these bees as endangered in 2019, but were then sued by a “consortium of California’s large scale industrial agricultural interests,” according to a Xerces Society press release. The trial court sided with the agricultural consortium, and the conservation groups appealed that decision in 2021. The decision this week marks a win for the conservation groups.

The four species are the western bumblebee (Bombus occidentalis), whose relative abundance has declined by 84%; the Suckley cuckoo bumblebee (Bombus suckleyi) which is considered critically endangered on the IUCN Red List and whose range has shrunk by 58%; the Crotch’s bumblebee (Bombus crotchii), now found in just 20% of its historical range; and Franklin’s bumblebee (Bombus franklini) which, despite extensive annual surveys, has not been seen since 2006.

Photo by Jiří Mikoláš
Photo by Jiří Mikoláš

According to California law, protections under the CESA mean that public agencies should not approve projects that would “jeopardize the continued existence” of any endangered or threatened species or adversely modify their habitat. These species are also protected from being removed from the wild or killed.

“It is a great day for California’s bumble bees!” said Pamela Flick, California program director with Defenders of Wildlife.

Sam Joyce, a certified law student with the Stanford Environmental Law Clinic who argued the case in the Third District, said the CESA is an important tool to protect and restore endangered species. He said the court’s ruling “ensures that CESA will fulfill its purpose of conserving ‘any endangered species’ by protecting the full range of California’s biodiversity, including terrestrial invertebrates.”

The IUCN’s Bumble Bee Specialist Group reports that 28% of all bumblebees in North America are at risk of extinction. Alarming on its own, this decline may also have consequences for ecosystems and crops, as one-third of food production depends on pollinators like bees.

“With one out of every three bites of food we eat coming from a crop pollinated by bees, this court decision is critical to protecting our food supply,” said Rebecca Spector, West Coast director at the Center for Food Safety. “The decision clarifies that insects such as bees qualify for protections under CESA, which are necessary to ensure that populations of endangered species can survive and thrive.”