Tag Archives: biodiversity

Mongabay: ‘What we need to protect and why’: 20-year Amazon research hints at fate of tropics

I distinctly remember taking this photo from the lodge at San Pedro in the Kosnipata Valley of the southern Peruvian Amazon in July 2013. I had never photographed a more spectacular-looking bird. And it was on my first trip to Peru, a guest a Miles Silman, a professor of tropical ecology at Wake Forest and co-founder of the Andes Biodiversity and Ecosystem Research Group (ABERG).

This story about the 20th anniversary meeting of a pioneering tropical research coalition came about for two reasons: 1) my first grandchild, Simon Catanoso, made his entrance into the world more an a week before his due date, thus opening the way for me to head to Peru, and 2) the 10th anniversary of the Andes Biodiversity and Ecosystem Research Group (ABERG) was the start of a new journalistic career path for me — climate change and climate policy — that ultimately led me to Mongabay.

A Spanish language version of the story, published on Mongabay LATAM, is here.

Since my first trip to Peru in 2013 at the insistence of my Wake Forest University colleague and collaborator Miles Silman, a top tropical ecologist and co-founder of ABERG, I’ve returned nearly a dozen times. Once to cover COP20 in 2014, the UN climate summit that set the stage for the 2015 Paris Agreement, which I covered for Mongabay, with funding support from the The Andrew Sabin Family Center for Environment and Sustainability at Wake Forest. Later, I returned multiple times as a communications consultant from Wake Forest for an influential NGO, CINCIA in Puerto Maldonado, founded in part by Miles with grants from USAID and World Wildlife Fund. In 2018, Miles and I developed a four-week summer program in tropical ecology and science writing and have brought four groups of Wake Forest students to the Amazon since then. Wake Forest featured our program online and in print.

Along the way, I’ve climbed a learning curve in climate science, forest and ecosystem mechanics, and biodiversity necessity that has enabled a late-career pivot to environmental journalism, mostly for Mongabay, that I simply could not have imagined when I left newspaper journalism in 2011. I am beyond grateful to Miles and host of environmental scientists, NGOs and forest campaigners over the past decade for assisting me in my immersion into covering parts of the most important story on earth, bar none — the existential threat to human life on earth wrought by human-induced climate change.

At ABERG10, held in the Andean village of Pisac, not from from Cuzco, I knew so little I was reluctant to interview the top tropical ecologists from around the world who gathered for that meeting, even though I was the only journalist there. Still, my coverage of ABERG10 was published in National Geograpic Online, as well as radio stories in WUNC and WFDD in North Carolina.

Ten years later, at ABERG20, many of those same scientists have become trusted sources, the issues they discussed and findings they presented are now familiar, and the context of complexity in their data gathering is something I’ve witnessed myself many times. The lead investigators and graduate students who make up ABERG are contributing to one of the most unique and vital longitudinal research projects in the global tropics across a range of topics.

My goal with the story here was to capture the essence of ABERG, its amazing transect, and its overlapping studies while highlighting a few of the scientists whose devotion to understanding the impact of warming temperatures on a warm and globally vital ecosystem remains strong and growing stronger.

ABERG’s study field for more than 20 years, off in the distance. My photo from 2013.

In my story, I describe the unique transect that Miles planned and oversaw the installation of starting in 2003 — more than 20 1-hectare plots on a single slope of the Andes stretching down from 12,000 feet to lowlands near sea level. This 2013 photo of mine accurately captures the ruggedness of each plot. What you can’t see is just how difficult these plots are to access, located as they are on a single, rough trail carved by Incans more than 500 years ago and used only by scientists and cocoa smugglers.

What the meticulous work of evaluating the impact of climate change on 1255 tree species along the transect looks like. My photo from 2013.

Miles Silman, ABERG co-founder and architect of the elevational gradient/transect, organized ABERG20 and opened the conference with a brief history of the group’s origins and aspirations. My photo from June 2023.

Mongabay: British Columbia delays promised protections as old growth keeps falling

Torrance Coste counts the rings on a fallen old-growth cedar
Torrance Coste counts the rings on a fallen old-growth cedar in the Upper Caycuse Valley. He estimated the age of the harvested tree at 500 years or more. Image by Justin Catanoso.

In summer of 2021, during a trip to the Pacific Northwest, I had hoped to continue my coverage of British Columbia’s at-risk old growth forests. But Covid-19 restrictions kept me from entering Canada. In July 2022, with the border re-opened, I was able to report this story from the field in Vancouver Island’s wooded and extensively harvested remote outback.

What I observed was both staggering and disheartening — large blocks of old-growth forests that should have been protected from logging, given a policy promise in 2020 by BC’s majority party, were being clearcut throughout southern Vancouver Island. Logging rushed to take down ancient giants while they still could. Torrance Coste, a BC forest campaigner, was my tour guide that day, taking me to settings of environmental degradation and decimation that few BC residents, let alone legislators, ever seen. They should. Torrance is also seen in a short video embedded in the story in which he explains the difference between native forests designed by nature and monoculture tree farms planted by logging companies.

The story is thorough and nuanced with politics, environmental science and the treatment of Indigenous peoples overlapping; I appreciate my editor Glenn Scherer giving me the space I needed to tell the full story. As a key source told me in the BC capital of Victoria:

“Certain politicians say, ‘Canada is just 1% of global emissions; it doesn’t matter what we do. But if we protect our at-risk old growth, we can be 10% of the global solution. Why don’t we want to be the beacon of what’s possible? Wouldn’t that be nice?”

Clearcut logging in the Anzac Valley
Clearcut logging in the Anzac Valley, part of the boreal rainforest near Prince George, British Columbia. Image by Taylor Roades courtesy of Stand.earth.

Mongabay: Old-growth forests of Pacific Northwest could be key to climate action — story and video

Hall of Mosses Trail, Hoh Rainforest, Olympic National Park, Washington state, U.S. Image by Tjflex2 via Flickr (CC BY-NC-ND 2.0).

This story linked here is one I originally imagined reporting from Vancouver Island in British Columbia. The Canadian province seems intent allowing the last of its majestic, irreplaceable old-growth forests be taken by the timber and pellet industries — aside from perhaps the Great Bear Rainforest on the central coast. But Covid restrictions locked the border between the US and Canada in late July (2021), so I shifted my focus to Washington state and Olympic National Park for my first field reporting since summer 2019.

My idea was simple — tour a coastal, old-growth rainforest with a forest ecologist and discuss why such rare ecosystems are important to harboring vast biodiversity, cleansing air and watersheds, and storing more carbon per hectare than the rainforests of the tropics. A good source and expert, Dominick DellaSala, chief scientist at Wild Heritage: Earth Island Institute, agreed to fly up from Oregon to meet me on the Upper Peninsula of Washington state, just a few miles across the sound from British Columbia.

I also wanted a video, linked here, to complement my story. My my editor Glenn Scherer approved a budget for me to hire Seattle-based Ted Grudowski, a friend of my Greensboro neighbor and documentarian Michael Frierson (lucky connections all around). Ted is an award-winning environmental videographer and knows the Olympic National Park inside out. He was as much as a fixer in helping me map a plan for where to report from as he was an expert videographer in capturing my hike with DellaSala, and later, a key interview with John Talberth, an expert Pacific Northwest forest conversation. The multimedia package came together exactly as I hoped it would, with a special assist from Mongabay video producers Manon Verchot in India, Lucia Torres in Spain and Lisa Golden in Great Britain.

Here’s an excerpt:

“As humans endure one of the worst summers ever punctuated by climate catastrophes around the world, and the U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change releases its most dire report yet, I’ve invited DellaSala, past president of the Society of Conservation Biology, to join me on this hike to discuss the value of old-growth forests.

“What’s at stake in protecting much of what’s left? How can government policy on both sides of the U.S.-Canadian border do more to preserve old-growth, perhaps the most effective means we have of slowing the alarming rate of global warming — letting tall, old trees grow taller and older in large, fully intact ecosystems?”

Northwest Coastal Map: Coastal temperate rainforests, among the rarest ecosystems on Earth as well as being the most carbon dense, stretch along the Pacific Coast from northern California to the Alaska panhandle. Map (left) by Dominick DellaSala and Island Press / photo (right) by John Schoen.

Mongabay: Dutch to limit forest biomass subsidies, possibly signaling EU sea change

he Netherlands is known for its photogenic windmills. But when it comes to renewable energy, wind accounts for only 23% of the country’s mix compared to 61% of renewable energy from burning biomass in coal-fired power plants.* The vast majority of Dutch energy still comes from burning oil, natural gas and coal. Photo credit: Ignacio Ferre on Visualhunt.com / CC BY-NC-ND.

This story of mine from The Netherlands appears to illustrate a small crack in the near-universal political support for biomass usage in the European Union. Is it a harbinger of more change in biomass policy as the EU moves in June 2021 to consider revisions to its Renewable Energy Directive II?

For a small country, just 17.3 million people, The Netherlands holds an outsized influence in the EU, and the new make up of its parliament (national elections were held March 17, 2021) could determine the fate of biomass subsidies in a country that is one of the largest importers of wood pellets from the US Southeast.

Small victories like this are celebrated by environmentalists, but the biomass industry continues to grow rapidly in scale and revenue. For all the science that illustrates the importance of keeping forests intact, and how burning wood pellets is more polluting than burning coal, the industry presses a different point of view and interpretation of the science that continues to hold sway with policy makers. Consider this response in my story from the president of the World Bioenergy Association:

“My take on the Dutch decision is that it is as wrong and poorly informed as the Brexit decision in the U.K.,” said Christian Rakos, responding from Austria. “It is based on campaigns that have not told the truth. The fact is, the Netherlands is currently among the worst-performing countries in Europe when it comes to renewable energy use and this [biomass] decision will further deteriorate its performance in terms of climate protection.”

He added: “Our position is to do everything possible to ensure [forest] sustainability, but to keep in mind that climate change is the greatest threat to ecosystems at present, and that it will be impossible to mitigate it without extensive use of bioenergy.”

Rakos is correct about The Netherlands and renewable energy usage. It still gets as much as 90 percent of its energy from fossil fuels. But most of its “renewable” energy comes from burning wood. As leading biomass expert Mary Booth told me: “We’re not going to burn our way out of the climate crisis.”

Mongabay Newscast: Are biomass and hydropower ‘false’ climate solutions?

A handful of biomass, prior to being turned into wood pellets. Photo by Oregon Department of Forestry, licensed under CC BY 2.0.

Mike Gaworecki has done a great job hosting the Mongabay Newscast for years. He’s invited me on the program several times, including on Feb. 10, 2021 with this episode. Here, he talks with me about the story and issue I’ve been covering since spring 2018 along with an eco-warrior from North Macedonia who is an expert is the hazards of hydropower. Mike described the episode like this:

On this episode of the Mongabay Newscast, we look at two energy-related technologies that are being promoted as climate solutions, biomass and hydropower, which might have unintended consequences that hamper their ability to supply clean energy and thus might not be sustainable solutions at all.

Our first guest is Justin Catanoso, a professor at Wake Forest University and long-time Mongabay correspondent. Catanoso tells us about the loopholes in renewable energy policies that have allowed the biomass industry to flourish under the guise of “carbon neutrality,” even though the burning of biomass for energy releases more carbon emissions than burning coal.

We also speak with Ana Colovic Lesoska, a biologist by training who founded the Eko-Svest Center For Environmental Research in North Macedonia. Colovic Lesoska was instrumental in shutting down two large hydropower projects in her country’s Mavrovo National Park, but there are still more than 3,000 new hydropower projects proposed in the Balkans. She tells us why hydropower is being adopted by Balkan countries and whether or not hydropower can be a climate solution at any scale.

A pair of Balkan lynxes. Ana Colovic Lesoska helped stop two large hydroelectric dams from being built in North Macedonia’s Mavrovo National Park, which provides important habitat for the Balkan lynx. Photo by Goldman Environmental Prize.

Mongabay: French Guiana soy biofuel power plants risk massive Amazon deforestation

Cutline: French Guiana, a department of France on the northeast coast of South America, is more than 98 percent forested in Amazonia. It’s one of the last remaining large tracts of largely undisturbed Amazon jungle, rich in biodiversity. Proposed policy and energy changes proposed in Paris could dramatically impact these important ecosystems.

This story here came to me in November as a tip from a source in Scotland who is familiar with my reporting on the growth of the biomass industry for energy production. This one has a new twist in that it doesn’t focus on wood pellets for energy, but rather soy for biofuels — in a part of the world rarely discussed but critical in size and scope for biodiversity protection and climate change mitigation — French Guiana.

With lots of research reports, government documents and exceptional sources in both Paris and Cayenne, French Guiana, the story started to take shape. With a population of just 300,000 almost entirely along it’s northern coast, French Guiana is in need of expanding and upgrading its energy system from diesel-powered plants to renewables. The problem, however, is the France wants the department to grow its own soy — the most common source for biofuel — to power five new energy stations. To grow enough soy would require a staggering amount of Amazon jungle to be clearcut — by one estimate, an area three times the square miles of New York City.

My story details what’s at stake with this unusual proposed policy change for a country and president, Emmanuel Macron, recognized for their sensitivity to climate action and ecosystem protections. Activists in French Guiana are mobilizing to stop the policy proposals, preserve their densely forested department (which is the size of Indiana) and promote true renewable energy sources like expanded wind and solar installations.

The heavily forested port of Larivot in Cayenne, French Guiana, where a 120-megawatt soy liquid biofuels energy station is planned. Image courtesy of Francois Kuseni.

Mongabay: Pope makes impassioned plea to save the Amazon — will the world listen?

Pope Francis meets Jose Gregorio Diaz Mirabal, a member of the Curripaco indigenous community, during a session of the Synod of Bishops for the Amazon at the Vatican, October 8, 2019. Image courtesy of CNS photo/Vatican Media.

On February 12, 2020, with a letter to “all persons of good will,” Pope Francis sought to reclaim the mantle of global environmental leadership he established in mid-2015. That’s when he the released of the first-ever papal encyclical (Catholic teaching document of the highest order) on environmental protection and climate change — Laudato Si, On Care for Our Common Home.

My story for Mongay here picks up that thread with Dear Amazon, a papal letter in response to the first-ever Vatican meeting in October 2019 to focus on a specific region of the planet — Amazonia. While topics at the so-called synod focused largely on environmental protection and the rights of the indigenous peoples who live in those jungles, the mainstream coverage of Francis’ letter focused almost solely on his decision to not allow priests to marry who agree to serve in the dramatically underserved Amazon regions spread across eight countries.

This left an opening for me to write a kind of exclusive about the pope’s environmental and social justice message, which makes up the vast majority of Dear Amazon. The story idea was pitched to me by my inimitable editor Glenn Scherer. I was glad for the opportunity.

Pope Francis at the opening Mass for the Amazon synod October 6, 2019. The administration of President Jair Bolsonaro was highly critical of the synod, seeing it as  interference with Brazil’s internal affairs. Image by Daniel Ibanez / CNA.

Mongabay: In Peru, a new president is faced with old conservation challenges

A giant otter in Cashu Lake at Cocha Cashu Biological Station in Manu National Park, Peru. Photo by Jason Houston

In early May 2018, I called Mongabay special project editor Erik Hoffner with a vague idea.  I would be spending six weeks in Peru between May 25 and July 5. Most of it would be in the Amazon, save for a week in Lima at the outset. I wanted to write a story that somehow captured the majesty of the Peruvian Amazon and what’s at stake as climate change and assaults such as mining, timbering and extraction put large swaths of the rainforest at risk. I’d be working with environmental photographer Jason Houston.

“I don’t exactly know what I’ll come up with, but I think we have a shot at something unique and interesting.” Erik was familiar with Jason’s extraordinary photography. He said, in essence, go for it.

We did. Here’s the result.

And an excerpt: Eavesdropping on nature from above is an unparalleled thrill. Even more thrilling is understanding the interconnectedness of the forest below, and everything in it; the mutual support and subtle language of various species that keep the forest thriving. Every living thing has a role to play, and it all adds up to provide ecosystem services such as carbon sequestration and cloud production that the developed world depends on, whether we know it or not.

The story turns on a simple premise: A new Peruvian president took power in Lima in April 2018 after the fourth consecutive president had been felled by corruption and scandal. Each promised to protect the Amazon, seeing sweeping environmental laws passed. Yet with only sporadic enforcement in limited areas, Peru has some of Latin America’s highest rates of deforestation. Much is at stake for biodiversity and the health of the planet. That’s the story Jason and I sought to tell in both my words and his powerful photos. Special thanks to Mongabay editor Genevieve Belmaker for her careful editing and layout.

This gigantic mahogany is Cocha Cashu is a rich target for illegal timbering. That’s me in the background. Photo by Jason Houston

 

Mongabay: Colombia, an example to world, balances conservation and development — a Q&A

Interviewing Colombia's minister of the environment on Sept. 21 at the headquarters of National Geographic. Photo by Enrique Ortiz

Interviewing Luis Murillo, Colombia’s minister of the environment, at the headquarters of National Geographic. Photo by Enrique Ortiz, Andes Amazon Fund

On Sept. 21, 2017, in Washington, D.C., I had the unique opportunity to interview one of the leaders of environmental protection in Latin America — Luis Murillo, the minister of the environment and sustainable development in the cabinet of President Juan Santos. Murillo was in DC that day for a ceremony sponsored by National Geographic honoring Santos for his aggressive action in doubling the amount of protected areas in his biodiverse country — from coral reefs to high-mountain rain forests — since taking office in 2010. My interview with Murillo preceded the event and was an exclusive for Mongabay. The story link is here.

In the weeks prior to my DC sojourn, I spent hours immersed in studying Colombian environmental politics, Santos’ environmental record, his controversial peace accord with the FARC that ended a 50-year civil war and earned him the 2016 Nobel Peace Prize, and as much as I could about Murillo. Haley Weibel, a communications specialist with the Andes Amazon Fund in DC, was instrumental in providing key material for me to read. My good friend Enrique Ortiz, program director with the fund, provided critical insight about Santos, Murillo and the myriad challenges to their environmental legacy.

My time with Murillo was limited, so we wasted no time jumping into deep end of the issues I wanted to discuss. He was a pleasure to talk with. He spoke with great candor and insight, and never ducked when I asked him pointed questions. He knows what’s at stake in setting aside so much land in Colombia — land that just below the surface is rich with fossil fuels and precious metals. He made it clear that he believes his developing country has a moral obligation to not plunder these critical ecosystems for short-term economic gain. But he stressed that the world’s wealthiest nations should feel compelled to support Colombia financially so that it can actually protect and preserve all the land Santos has set aside for future generations. Extraction industrialists will only sit on the sidelines for so long.  Deforestation in Colombia since the end of the civil war is already escalating. My interview with Murillo gets into such thorny issues and more. My thanks to Mongabay founder Rhett Butler for assigning me the story.

 

Mongabay exclusive: Iconic musician Paul Simon announces tour supporting biodiversity (story and podcast)

PaulSimon_credit_MyrnaSuarez_0444_General1

Early last month, Erik Hoffner, a special editor with Mongabay, got in touch to tell me about the site’s coup of an interview with Dr. E.O. Wilson, one of the world’s leading conservationists. The story and Q&A was exceptionally well done. Erik then let me know that the E.O. Wilson Biodiversity Foundation based at Duke University would be hosting a two-day conference, and the legendary singer-song writer Paul Simon would be involved. He wondered if I would be interested in trying to get an interview with Simon and writing a story for Mongabay.

Not a tough question to answerPaul Simon and me. With the help of Paula Erhlich, the CEO of Wilson’s foundation, Simon agreed to meet with me for an exclusive interview on March 3 on the Duke campus during the conference. Simon’s music has been a seminal part of my life, and the life of my family, for decades. Meeting him was a special thrill of a fortunate journalist working for a great news organization. We spoke easily and intently for an hour, a little about music, but mostly about Wilson’s Half-Earth Project and its goal to stave off species extinctions around the world.

We also got to break the news of Simon’s 17-city U.S. concert tour in June 2017 with all profits going to Wilson’s foundation and the Half-Earth cause. The full story is here.

On March 21, 2017, the Mongabay podcast, produced by Mike Gaworecki, posted. The link to my conversation with Mike about the Paul Simon interview, with long outtakes from the interview, is here.