Trouble by the water: Minnesota's vanishing natural lakeshores→

MPR:

Are Minnesotans loving their lakes to death? Nearly half of wild shorelines that protect lakes from pollution are now gone. It’s possible to repair the damage, but is the will there to do it?

Join MPR News correspondent Kirsti Marohn as she explores these questions and takes us for a lake tour to see how suburban-style development is changing Minnesota’s lakeshores.

Funding for this series is provided in part by the Four Cedars Environmental Fund of the Duluth Superior Area Community Foundation.

Derek Lynch: Our Relationship with the Environment→

The Conservation:

NASA

“Has Nature, framed as being separate to humanity, lost its relevance? Does humanity’s exceptionalist mindset, as famed biologist E.O. Wilson suggests, leave us “contemptuous towards lower forms of life”? Globally, we have entered the Anthropocene, with humans the dominant force driving change in all ecosystems. Through our overwhelming influence on the atmosphere, hydrosphere and biosphere, no ecosystem anywhere is sheltered from our influence.

... is it now the time to go beyond “nature” as a concept external to humanity? Instead, we could promote a deeper understanding of biodiversity and community as the shared long history and future fate both of humanity and non-human life. Such revised paradigms are closer to Indigenous viewpoints of community, in which land management is conducted in partnership with our relatives within all ecosystems.

Have we reached the end of nature in its traditional meaning as distinct from us? Reframing our relationship with nature is an important step to deepen our commitment to addressing these human-made environmental crises.”

Adriana Craciun: Vagrant, Invasive or Pioneer?→

The Conversation:

“When migratory birds like this sea eagle appear outside their typical range, ornithologists call them “vagrants.” The scientific language of belonging draws on a shared cultural vocabulary for both human and nonhuman beings. Terms like vagrant, native, invasive, migrant and colonist all emerge from centuries of political discourses describing which persons belong where.”

Doug Johnson: Fish Get Smaller with Harvest→

Ars Technica:

Anton Petrus

“Generation over generation, catch after catch, fishing changes fish evolution. This phenomenon, called fisheries-induced evolution, is well documented, though it impacts the myriad species of fish differently. For the North Sea cod, it has meant that early bloomers thrive, while fish that are slower to mature get taken out of the gene pool. This has meant that the fish population is evolving toward smaller sizes. A recent paper models what it would take to reverse this effect through conservation, and what it would mean economically to do so.

“In general, fishing is one of the main drivers of change in marine ecosystems,” Hanna Schenk, a postdoctoral researcher at the German Centre for Integrative Biodiversity Research (iDiv) Halle-Jena-Leipzig and one of the paper’s authors, told Ars.

Fishing increases mortality rates among fish—particularly large fish, which are caught in higher numbers because they are more likely to stay within fishers’ nets. In turn, this puts selective pressure on a species: fish that mature quicker (but remain smaller) gain an advantage. These smaller, early bloomers then pass on their genes more often, which impacts the whole population over time. “There is a trade-off between those two [factors], and once a cod matures, it grows less. So, when that happens earlier, it usually doesn’t reach such a large size as if it wasn’t spawning,” she said.”

The science paper is here

Water Blogged: Science's Role in Society→

UW-Madison: Center for Limnology

“Yes, science can tell us about the current state of our lakes and explain how they got that way and offer suggestions for how we head in a different direction. But that’s where science stops. It rarely gets the final say. It’s up to society to take it from there. Policymakers, resource managers, business leaders and (perhaps the biggest agent of change) concerned citizens, are the actors that then get involved.

When it comes to informed decision making, science provides the info. Society makes the decision.”

Michael Thomas: Hopeful Climate Stories of 2022→

Distilled:

“For many climate advocates, 2022 was a year that brought hope. After decades of failed efforts, the United States finally passed a climate bill. And not just any climate bill. The Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) may be the biggest climate bill in history.

But the federal climate bill wasn’t the only sign of climate progress in 2022. Leaders around the world took significant action this year. Meanwhile, investment in key climate solutions like electric vehicles, offshore wind, and heat pumps grew faster than ever before.”

The Guardian: High Carp Prices Affect Poles→

Reuters in Warsaw:

Wojtek Jargiło/EPA

“For most Poles, no Christmas would be complete without carp for dinner. But with prices rising and shopping budgets already stretched by surging inflation, consumers are having to fork out more for their favourite festive fish.

Polish people hold their main celebration on Christmas Eve, with carp the centrepiece of a 12-dish feast that is traditionally meat-free.

While the bottom-feeding lake dweller is considered inedible in parts of the world, in Poland and some other central European countries carp is served cold in jelly as well as fried or baked and has long been seen as a relatively cheap way of feeding a large group of people.”

John McCracken: Wisconsin Fish Fry →

Grist:

John McCracken

“Wisconsin lakes are warming and becoming more hospitable to invasive species and extreme weather conditions thanks to a global rise in temperature, challenging the future of this statewide ritual. Commonly fried fish species like perch, lake trout, and whitefish have declined, causing Wisconsin restaurants to look beyond their own lakes for certain fish, or abandon some altogether.

Two Great Lakes — Michigan and Superior — touch Wisconsin’s shores and have experienced a steady rise in temperature since 1995. Even the deepest depths of the lake system are starting to warm up and the average maximum ice cover on the Great Lakes has dropped over 20 percent in the last 50 years.

The fish fry is predicated on Wisconsin “geography, religion, and history,” said Terese Allen, an expert on the state’s culinary history and a co-author of Flavor of Wisconsin: An Informal History of Food and Eating in the Badger State.”

Brown University: Non-native Species Not All Bad→

PHYS.ORG

“In a review article published on Thursday, Oct. 6, in Trends in Ecology and Evolution, Sax and two co-authors pointed out that most research on non-native species focuses on their negative consequences. They argued that long-standing biases against non-native species within the scientific literature have clouded the scientific process and hindered public understanding. In the new article, the authors try to shift the focus to consider the benefits of non-native species for a more balanced discussion.

”Positive impacts of non-native species are often explained as serendipitous surprises—the sort of thing that people might expect to happen every once in a while, in special circumstances,” said Sax, a professor of environment and society, and of ecology, evolution and organismal biology. “Our new paper argues that the positive impacts of non-native species are neither unexpected nor rare, but instead common, important and often of large magnitude.””

Bill Chappell: Walleye Tournament Scandal→

NPR:

Cuyahoga County Office of the Prosecutor

“Hoping to win a pro fishing tournament with nearly $30,000 on the line, Jake Runyan and Chase Cominsky illegally stacked the deck in their favor, according to officials in Ohio — and now the pair have been indicted on three felony charges each.

A grand jury has indicted Runyan and Cominsky on charges of cheating, attempted grand theft and possessing criminal tools, according to the Cuyahoga County prosecutor’s office. The charges are fifth-degree felonies, meaning they could each bring a punishment of up to 12 months in prison and $2,500 in fines.”

Additional info from NPR

David Nikel: SF6 (Sulfur hexafluoride): Truths and Myths→

Norwegian University of Science and Technology:

“Several articles are pointing the finger at the growth in renewables—specifically wind turbines—as being responsible for the growth in SF6 emissions, with some going as far as saying that the gas is the energy industry’s dirty little secret. In this spirit of transparency, we asked several experts from NTNU and SINTEF to separate the truths from the myths.

Along with CFCs, HCFCs, HFCs and PFCs, SF6 is an industrial gas that doesn’t exist naturally in the atmosphere and so impacts the radiation balance, contributing to climate change.

”It is true that SF6 has between 22,000 and 23,500 times higher global warming potential than CO2 when taken over a 100-year perspective. Because it’s so stable, the gas has an estimated lifetime of up to 3,200 years. Considered together, these facts make SF6 the most potent chemically reactive greenhouse gas investigated by the IPCC,” says NTNU Professor Francesco Cherubini.

”The concentration of the gas in the atmosphere is increasing so it’s good to have some attention on this. However, it’s important to put it into context. While it’s a dangerous greenhouse gas, SF6 today contributes less than 1 percent of man made global warming,” he adds.”

Jeremy Miller: Trojan Trout→

bioGraphic:

Nick Hawkins/NPL

“How this beautiful interloper from eastern North America got to this place is unclear, beyond that it was part of a human-aided diaspora that loosed brook trout into high-altitude lakes and creeks across the West, from northwest Washington to southern New Mexico. There, brookies’ voracious appetites and rapid sexual maturation have spelled trouble not only for native trout like bull, rainbow, California golden, and cutthroat, which they outcompete, but also for a host of other aquatic organisms, including frogs and salamanders.

As Miller and Field shock and scoop their way upcreek, though, a pattern that could be the key to Leandro Creek’s salvation becomes apparent. Brook trout may greatly outnumber the Rio Grande cutthroat here, in some stretches by more than five to one, but nearly every single one of the brookies the crew captures is male.

That’s because many are a lab-produced variety known as “Trojan” brook trout. They are unique in that they carry not one, but two copies of the Y chromosome that codes maleness; they have no X chromosome to pass on. Unlike many creatures, including humans, fish can survive without an X, and seem unimpaired by the lack. And since 2018, Miller, the lead researcher on the project, and his predecessors have been carrying out a bold new experiment, stocking various streams across the Vermejo reserve with this strain in an attempt to tilt the brook trout sex ratio so far male that eventually the population will stop breeding and blink out on its own. Similar efforts are also underway in a handful of creeks in Idaho, Washington, and Oregon, and Nevada plans to embark on its own stocking program this summer.
”

Bob Timmons: Tribute to Darby Nelson→

Star Tribune:

“Whether they knew him or knew of him, Minnesotans across the state’s vast conservation landscape are mourning and paying tribute to a man whose advocacy for state waters ran as deep as his interests.

Darby Nelson, schooled in aquatic ecology and by a life outdoors, was a passionate mentor and teacher at Anoka-Ramsey Community College for 35 years. That career overlapped with his service as a DFL legislator from 1983-1988, where he carried on his environmentalism, writing bills that created the state’s Board of Water and Soils Resources, protected public lands, and even created a funding mechanism for cross-country ski trails.”

Obituary

Hannah Ritchie: How We Fixed the Ozone Layer→

Works in Progress

Ozone levels stabilized in the 1990s following the Montreal Protocol, and have started to recover. They are projected to reach pre-1980 levels before 2075.

“When it comes to stories of progress, there aren’t many environmental successes to learn from. We’ve seen massive improvements in many human dimensions in recent decades – declines in extreme poverty; reductions in child mortality; increases in life expectancy. But most metrics that relate to the environment are moving in the wrong direction. Although there are some local and national successes – such as the large reductions in local air pollution in rich countries – there are almost none at the global level.

Yet there is one exception: the ozone layer. Humanity’s ability to heal the depleted ozone layer is not only our biggest environmental success, it is the most impressive example of international cooperation on any challenge in history...

Our efforts to tackle other environmental problems have not been quite so successful. Can we extrapolate any of the lessons from the task of fixing the ozone layer to other challenges, such as climate change?

There are of course many similarities: ozone depletion and climate change are shared, global problems. Unlike air pollution where local residents are impacted by local emissions, it is the entire global population that is impacted by ozone depleting substances and greenhouse gas emissions. This is because these gases disperse easily across the globe; they are known as ‘well-mixed’ gases. The need for international coordination on both issues is therefore obvious.

We can also learn from the ramping up of efforts over time. The ambition of the first Montreal Protocol in the 1980s was far too weak to solve the problem. Although it was better than ‘business as usual’, the target would have meant that the ozone hole would have continued to expand. Our efforts were only successful because we continued to raise the standards of regulation over time. Climate policy is in a similar position today, and has been for a long time.”

Shannon Prather: Bird Deaths from Lead Tackle→

Star Tribune:

Brian Peterson

“Two Maplewood DFLers, Sen. Charles Wiger and Rep. Peter Fischer, introduced bills in January to ban the sale and use of lead fishing jigs and sinkers. Wiger said he’s feeling hopeful after Minnesota became the first state in the nation last year to prohibit most industrial uses of trichloroethylene (TCE), which can increase the risk of cancer and other serious health issues.

An overwhelming majority of lawmakers supported that ban after White Bear Township-based Water Gremlin agreed to pay $7 million in fines and fees after the Minnesota Pollution Control Agency (MPCA) determined the plant had released an excess amount of TCE into the air.

Wiger said his constituents are now pushing for more environmental justice measures. “My district is very concerned about the environmental impact of toxic chemicals,” said Wiger, whose neighboring district was impacted by nearby Water Gremlin. “We need to listen to the next generation.”

Others, including the nonprofit Friends of Minnesota Scientific and Natural Areas, are also aiming to ban lead in hunting ammunition. Board Chairman Tom Casey said people would be shocked to know the amount of lead left in wilderness areas that belong to the public. While legislators push for policy changes, the MPCA has launched a “Get The Lead Out” campaign that asks Minnesotans to voluntarily give up lead fishing tackle.”

Latest statistics from necropsy of Minnesota loons showed a lead poisoning rate of 14%, and based on these and other data, it is estimated that 100 to 200 loons die per year from lead fishing tackle in Minnesota. A needless loss.

Cara Giaimo: Shifting Baseline Syndrome→

Anthropocene:

“Imagine a world where flocks of birds block out the sun, millions of bison roam the Great Plains, and groupers are the size of those who catch them. For many contemporary people, such scenes seem impossible, as though they should be preceded by “once upon a time.” But they did happen, mere centuries or even decades ago. As generations of humans empty the world, their descendants are unable to see—and so find it hard to understand—how full it once was.

In 1995, fisheries scientist Daniel Pauly used the term “shifting baseline syndrome” to describe this phenomenon: each generation of fisheries scientists, he wrote, “accepts as a baseline the stock size and species composition that occurred at the beginning of their careers,” leading to “a gradual accommodation of the creeping disappearance” of species. Shifting baseline syndrome and its implications are now frequently invoked by people concerned about conservation, management, and environmental education.

But although it’s an intuitive concept, it’s difficult to study. For a recent paper in People and Nature, a group of researchers surveyed hundreds of UK residents about the populations of ten local bird species, and compared their knowledge with historic data. They also, for the first time, connected the survey-takers’ knowledge of past and present bird abundance with their opinions about conserving those birds. And while they found evidence that younger people are generally less adept at recognizing biological change than their elders are, they also found that knowledge of and personal experience with nature can help overcome that age gap. ”

Emily Levang: Can We Protect Nature by Giving it Legal Rights?→

Ensia:

Jacob Boomsma, iStockphoto.com

“In August 2019, a group of citizens met in Duluth to learn about an unconventional strategy that could protect this place and potentially change its story going forward. Rights of Nature is a growing international movement that recognizes species and ecosystems not simply as resources for humans to use, but as living entities with rights of their own. Twenty people from different backgrounds attended the gathering: activists and organizers, grandmothers, a Catholic priest and an Indigenous elder, each with their own concerns about the ecosystem. Now community members are working on a ballot initiative for 2020 to recognize rights of the estuary. This way of seeing the natural world is fundamental to many Indigenous worldviews. If Rights of Nature finds a place in Western law, it could transform our ability to protect nature.”

Curt Meine & Bryan Norton: The Pragmatist's View→

Center for Humans & Nature:

“As large systems change slowly, they become sort of the background for what we do. Smaller systems—like our yard, for example—change much more rapidly. I noticed that Leopold had this very sophisticated conception of time and space, even though he introduced it metaphorically. And then I read “Thinking Like a Mountain,” in which Leopold described how he had destroyed the wolf populations [in the American Southwest] and how he later came to regret that after the deer population he was trying to increase started to actually decrease from overpopulation and over-browsing of the mountainside. Leopold wrote about the famous incident where, having killed an old wolf, he watched the green fire die in her eyes. What he learned there, I think, was that wolves function in a larger and slower system than humans do.

Consequently, we can come to hate something like the wolf, even though, once you start to see the wolf’s role in longer-term developments, the wolf becomes almost like a savior, right? Having destroyed the wolves and changed the ecological system, he then regretted it. He fell back on that hierarchical framework to say, “I was thinking only like a human. I was only thinking in terms of increasing the deer herd for hunters. But then I realized that my activities on that level spilled over to affect the usually slower-scale changes.” In fact, he saw the impacts on the ecological scale, the scale at which deer and wolves interact. The deer populations growing out of control were a result of his removing the wolves. So his human thinking destroyed a very complex system.

So what’s interesting about that is that Leopold starts to see the world on three different levels: the human, the ecological, and the evolutionary. And he felt that we can see positive values on each of those three levels. The positive level for humans is generally economic and developmental. The level of interactions among species (wolves and deer, in particular) would be the ecological scale. And what he realized was that, however important our economics are, if we destroy the ecological system, it’s going to come back and bite us even at the human level. So his explanation of why he went wrong was very much based in a scientific model, which he showed through the metaphor of “thinking like a mountain.””

Interesting perspective that we need to broaden our timelines to create pragmatic environmental solutions.

Sonia Shah: Native or Invasive -- Or Why these Classifications?→

Yale360:

NK SANFORD / ALAMY STOCK PHOTO

“Author Emma Marris and Macalester College biologist Mark Davis, among others, have pointed out that only a small subset of “alien” species wreak damage on already resident species, and that the categorization of wild creatures as either “native” or “alien” obscures as much as it elucidates... Now, a growing number of scientists say that conservation policies based on the native-alien dichotomy could actually threaten biodiversity. Today’s climate-driven range shifts are “one of the only solutions for species to adapt to climate change,” says ecologist Nathalie Pettorelli, who studies the impact of global environmental changes on biodiversity at the Institute of Zoology in London. Ensuring that wild species can make life-saving movements and establish self-sustaining populations in new habitats, while also protecting already-resident species, will require new ways of evaluating species — not just on their origins and historical value to society but on their ecological functions and how they can contribute to the novel ecosystems of the future.

For some long-time critics of the native-alien paradigm in conservation, it’s the fundamental principle of evaluating species based on their origins that needs to go. “Whether because of climate or because people move them, species need to be evaluated on their own effects,” says Macalester College’s Davis, “and not on whether they are natives or new natives or non-natives or non-natives moved by humans.” Critics such as Davis essentially call for the dissolution of invasion biology and restoration biology as they’ve been traditionally defined. “I don’t see the value of keeping those distinctions,” he says.”

Invasive biologists’ value judgments cannot be supported by science (i.e., values are not in the realm of science). Labeling species as native/nonnative, invasive/noninvasive, good/bad often limits pragmatic management. Categorization leads to prejudice, prejudice leads to contempt, contempt leads to hate, and hate leads to the dark side. We need to be pragmatic and binary thinking is destructive.

Robert Macfarlane: Should Nature Have Rights→

The Guardian:

Zu Sanchez Photography/Getty Images

“Appalled by the lake’s degradation, and exhausted by state and federal failures to improve Erie’s health, in December 2018 Toledo city councillors drew up an extraordinary document: an emergency “bill of rights” for Lake Erie. At the bill’s heart was a radical proposition: that the “Lake Erie ecosystem” should be granted legal personhood, and accorded the consequent rights in law – including the right “to exist, flourish, and naturally evolve”.

The Erie Bill of Rights is a brief, passionate, urgent text; reminiscent to me of a scene from a Greek tragedy or an Ibsen play. “We, the people of the City of Toledo … ” runs the italicised choral refrain; a “recital”, in legalese. The bill’s phrasing rings with love and rage. It dreams beautifully of an equitable land ethic. “It has become necessary,” the bill declares, “that we … extend legal rights to our natural environment to ensure that the natural world [is] no longer subordinated to the accumulation of surplus wealth and unaccountable political power.” ...

Embedded in the bill is a bold ontological claim – that Lake Erie is a living being, not a bundle of ecosystem services. The bill is, really, a work of what might be called “new animism” (the word comes from the Latin anima, meaning spirit, breath, life). By reassigning both liveliness and vulnerability to the lake, it displaces Erie from its instrumentalised roles as sump and source. As such, the bill forms part of a broader set of comparable recent legal moves in jurisdictions around the world – all seeking to recognise interdependence and animacy in the living world, and often advanced by indigenous groups – which have together come to be known as the “natural rights” or “rights of nature” movement.”