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Who doesn’t love birds (other than Sheldon Cooper)?  We are attracted by their beauty and diversity, their songs, the graceful freedom of their flight and their companionship, at the bird feeder or in our homes as pets.  January 5 honors that love as National Bird Day.  The day was created in 2002 by a collaboration of the Born Free USA Foundation and the Avian Welfare Coalition.  National Bird Day is celebrated on January 5 because the annual Christmas bird count ends on this date.  The annual bird count focuses our attention on the conservation of wild native birds.  National Bird Day adds a focus on the care of captive birds, most of which are from other countries than the United States and imported to this country as pets.

Understanding how to care for captive birds requires more than providing food, water and cleaning cages.  Birds are complex creatures, with elaborate and diverse social relationships with other birds, both in their species and among species.  National Bird Day helps bird owners and admirers create the right environments for their pets and the right expectations for the bond between birds and their owners.

Perhaps more importantly, however, National Bird Day emphasizes that wild birds should remain wild.  Most exotic bird species are not domesticated, but captured from the wild.  Hence, their needs are associated with their instincts and learned behavior in the wild, not based on a history of being carefully bred to live in cages or human homes.  Also, many bird species from tropical areas are threatened by extinction because of illegal capture and trade, and many birds die cruel deaths while being smuggled across national borders.  One estimate is that 60% of wild-caught birds die in the process of being transported to markets.

About  one-quarter of the known 9,600 bird species are traded in the global wild bird market.  The largest exporters of wild birds are African countries, led by Senegal.  The largest importers of wild birds are the countries in Europe.  The U.S. once was the largest importer of wild birds, but this has fallen dramatically because of regulations enacted in the Wild Bird Conservation Act of 1992.

According to the National Bird Day website, about 12% of the world’s bird species are in danger of extinction.  Parrots are especially susceptible—nearly one-third of the globe’s 330 parrot species are in trouble.

References:

Avian Welfare Coalition.  January 5^th, National Bird Day, More Beautiful Wild.  Available at:   http://www.avianwelfare.org/nationalbirdday/index.htm.  Accessed January 4, 2018.

UN Food and Agriculture Organization.  2011.  International trade in wild birds, and related bird movement, in Latin America and the Caribbean.  Available at:  http://www.fao.org/docrep/013/i0708e/i0708e00.pdf.  Accessed January 4, 2018

“Bond.  James Bond.”  Those words are now immortal among the fans of Ian Fleming’s super-spy.  James Bond has been played by Sean Connery, Roger Moore, Daniel Craig and a number of others.  But who was the real James Bond?  Not a spy, not a dapper man-about-town.  No, the real James Bond was an ornithologist.

James Bond was born on January 4, 1900, in Philadelphia (died in 1989). He later moved to England with his father and studied at Trinity College, Cambridge University.  Returning to Philadelphia, he soon gave up a career in banking to focus on his first love—natural history.  He followed in his father’s footsteps by sailing on a collecting expedition to the lower Amazon River in 1925 on behalf of the Academy of Natural Sciences of Philadelphia.  Now completely hooked, he became a volunteer curator there—one of “the last of a traditional museum breed, the independently wealthy, non-salaried curator, who lacked advanced university degrees.”

Bond was intrigued especially with the bird fauna of the Caribbean.  He explored more than 100 Caribbean islands during his career.  His most influential work is the definitive guide to the birds of the region, first published in 1936 as The Birds of the West Indies. Bond is credited with discovering that the birds of the Caribbean are related to those of North America, not South America, as had been previously assumed.  He also published books about the birds of Maine and Bolivia, along with dozens of other scientific papers.  Bond received many honors and awards for his work, including the Brewster Medal in 1954, the highest honor of the American Ornithologists’ Union.

But it was The Birds of the West Indies that earned him fame as the namesake for the world’s favorite spy.  Ian Fleming, the creator of the fictional James Bond, spent months at a time at his Jamaican home (Goldeneye) and was an amateur bird-watcher.  When he was writing his first spy novel, Casino Royale, in 1952, he was casting around for a name for the hero that would be unremarkable.  Fleming later wrote:

“I was determined that my secret agent should be as anonymous as possible….At that time one of my bibles was, and still is, Birds of the West Indies by James Bond, and it struck me that this name, brief, unromantic and yet very masculine, was just what I needed and so James Bond II was born…”

The real James Bond—JB authenticus, as his wife referred to him—wasn’t amused by the appropriation of his name.  He never played up the connection, even when offered $100 to land in a helicopter on the roof of a movie theater.  Ian Fleming appreciated the couple, however, and, at their only meeting, gave them a pre-publication copy of his novel, You Only Live Twice, inscribed “To the real James Bond, from the Thief of his identity, Ian Fleming, Feb. 5, 1964—a great day!”  That book sold recently at auction for $84,000.

Next time you watch the Bond film, Die Another Day, pay attention to the early scenes.  As usual, Bond is pretending to be something other than a spy.  This time, he claims to be an ornithologist and holds a copy of The Birds of the West Indies.

References:

Blakely, Julia.  2016.  Bond, James Bond:  The birds, the books, the bond.  Unbound, blog of the Smithsonian Libraries.  Available at:  https://blog.library.si.edu/2016/06/bond-james-bond-birds-books-bond/#.WG0aeVMrKpp .  Accessed January 3, 2017.

New York Times.  1989.  James Bond, ornithologist, 89; Fleming adopted name for 007.  New York Times, February 17, 1989.  Available at:  http://www.nytimes.com/1989/02/17/obituaries/james-bond-ornithologist-89-fleming-adopted-name-for-007.html.  Accessed January 3, 2017.

Parkes, Kenneth C.  1989.  In memoriam:  James Bond. The Auk, 106:718-720.  Available at:  http://sora.unm.edu/sites/default/files/journals/auk/v106n04/p0718-p0720.pdf.  Accessed January 3, 2017.

A long barrier island on Florida’s Atlantic Coast, just west of Orlando and south of Daytona, is notable for two reasons.  One is the presence of NASA’s Kennedy Space Center rocket launching site.  The other is Canaveral National Seashore, signed into existence on January 3, 1975, by President Gerald Ford.

Even without being adjacent to Kennedy Space Center, Canaveral deserves recognition as an area of outstanding ecological value.  The seashore includes 58,000 acres of barrier island, including a 24-mile stretch of undeveloped beach—the longest on Florida’s East Coast.  But its proximity to the space center gives it special cache.  Formerly part of a missile-testing facility, it was declared a national seashore to provide a natural buffer to the adjacent NASA rocket-launching sites.  That rationale has meant no development in the park, aside from a few parking lots dotted along the beach.  There are virtually no facilities, for recreational users or anyone else.  Day use only is allowed, and visitors must be gone by sundown.

Consequently, the area is a haven for wildlife, with only natural light—and dark—and sounds of wind and surf.

The park includes habitat for 15 threatened or endangered species, more than all but one other National Park Service property.  Three species of sea turtles nest there, building up to 7,000 nests every year.  As many as 250 species of birds are present, either resident or using the habitat for refuge on annual migrations.  It may be the ultimate paradox—a site created to preserve untouched nature is neighbor to a site where humankind’s most advanced technologies are launched into outer space!

The area seems untouched now, but it has been inhabited by humans for a long time.  Archeological sites within the seashore demonstrate that Native Americans of the Timucua and Ais peoples were well established before Spanish explorers, including Ponce de Leon, landed in the vicinity around 1500.  The Indians built Turtle Mound, a hill of oyster shells that long provided a navigation landmark and is still more than 30 feet high. Spansh and French explorers frequented the area for centuries, and the role of the lagoon behind the beach was significant for water transportation through the late 1800s.

Visitation is high.  More than 1.6 million people enjoyed the park in 2016, and visitation has been over 1 million annually since soon after the park’s opening in 1975.  The park is open very day of the year, but the southern beach area is so close to one NASA launching pad that it is closed when launches are scheduled.

References;

Duckett, Maryellen Kennedy.  Florida’a Pristine Parks:  Canaveral National Seashore.  National Geographic.  Available at:  https://www.nationalgeographic.com/travel/florida-pristine-parks/canaveral-national-seashore/.  Accessed January 3, 2018.

National Park Service.  2007.  First Annual Centennial Strategy for Canaveral National Seashore.  Available at:  http://npshistory.com/publications/future-americas-parks-2007/centennial-strategies/cana.pdf,  Accessed January 3, 2018.

National Park Service.  Canaveral National Seashore, Florida.  Available at:  https://www.nps.gov/cana/learn/nature/index.htm.  Accessed January 3, 2018.

Orlando Sentinel.  2013.  Florida Beach Guide:  Canaveral National Seashore.  Available at:  http://www.orlandosentinel.com/travel/beach/orl-canaveralbeach-story-story.html.  Accessed January 3, 2018.

The father of wilderness preservation, Bob Marshall, was born on January 2, 1901 (died 1939).  Almost single-handedly, Bob Marshall convinced the world that preserving some wild lands, untouched by the works of humans, was an essential part of civilization.  Although he lived for only 39 years, his impact has been immortal.

Robert Marshall was a product of his upbringing.  He was born into a wealthy Jewish family in New York City.  Both his parents were social activists, believing that the disadvantaged deserved a chance at a better life.  Marshall himself grew to be an avowed socialist, committed to fight for the rights of the unrepresented (in later life, he was persecuted by the federal government for his communist leanings).  But his father, especially, also loved the forest and the solitude it brought; he was a founder of the New York College of Forestry and Environmental Science (known today as SUNY-ESF in Syracuse).  The family spent summers in the New York mountains, and young Marshall adopted that love of the outdoors.

He determined early that he would become a forester rather than a city dweller.  He studied at the school established by his father, graduating with high honors in 1924.  While a student, he established his lifelong practice of hiking and mountain climbing—20, 30, 40 miles per day.  A day lasted 24 hours, he liked to say, so a day-hike should last 24 hours as well.  By the time he was a junior in college, he had hiked to the top of the 42 highest peaks in the Adirondack Mountains, the first to do so.  He set many other records for hiking and climbing, including climbing 9 Adirondack high peaks in one day.

Upon graduation, he began work in Washington State with the U.S. Forest Service.  He worked for that agency on and off throughout his life.  Along the way, he earned both Master’s (Harvard) and doctoral (Johns Hopkins) degrees.  He traveled extensively throughout the West.   He spent 15 months in Alaska’s Brooks Range living in a remote Native American village and exploring the region more extensively than anyone before (and perhaps since).  His commitment to both wilderness and social causes emerged during that stay.  He later wrote a book about his time in Alaska, devoting half his royalties to the Native Americans among whom he lived.

He lobbied actively for wilderness preservation throughout his career.  As the head forester in the Bureau of Indian Affairs, he recommended nearly 5 million acres of Indian lands as wilderness areas.  He was instrumental in writing prescriptions for roadless and wild lands for the Forest Service that eventually became the standards for their management.

He wrote what is considered the seminal treatise on wilderness—“The Problem of the Wilderness”—in 1930.  “There is just one hope of repulsing the tyrannical ambition of civilization to conquer every niche on the whole earth,” he wrote.  “That hope is the organization of spirited people who will fight for the freedom of wilderness.”  Marshall was true to his mission.  In 1935, he co-founded The Wilderness Society, which quickly became—and remains to this day—the primary non-governmental group advocating for wilderness.  A bachelor made wealthy by inheritance from his parents, he devoted his entire fortune to social and wilderness causes, including leaving one-quarter of his estate to The Wilderness Society.

Marshall died unexpectedly on a train trip from Washington, DC, to New York City on November 11, 1939. The cause of death was listed as heart failure, which might have been brought on by his secret bout with leukemia.

His influence had been well established by then, however, and his legacy continues.  In 1964, The Wilderness Act became law, establishing the category of wilderness as a specific use for federal lands.  Today, the U.S. has 765 areas classified as wilderness, covering nearly 110 million acres—about 5% of the U.S. land surface.  Some are large, like the 9-million-acre Wrangell-Saint Elias Wilderness in Alaska; some are small, like the 5.5-acre Pelican Island Wilderness in Florida.  The Bob Marshall Wilderness Area was established in Montana, an area of 1.5 million acres generally considered to be one of the best preserved ecosystems in the world.

But all are meaningful, as Marshall himself said:

“Any one who has stood upon a lofty summit and gazed over an inchoate tangle of deep canyons and cragged mountains, of sunlit lakelets and black expanses of forest, has become aware of a certain giddy sensation that there are no distances, no measures, simply unrelated matter rising and falling without any analogy to the banal geometry of breadth, thickness, and height.”

References:

Madison, Erin. 2014.  Marshall left a legacy in Montana’s largest wilderness.  Great Falls Tribune.  Available at:  http://www.greatfallstribune.com/story/outdoors/2014/07/30/marshall-left-legacy-montanas-largest-wilderness/13388321/.  Accessed January 2, 2018.

OurMed.  Bob Marshall (wilderness activist).  Available at:  http://www.ourmed.org/wiki/Bob_Marshall_(wilderness_activist).  Accessed January 2, 2018.

Wilderness Connect.  Bob Marshall.  Available at:  http://www.wilderness.net/NWPS/Marshall.  Accessed January 2, 2018.

Wilderness Connect.  The Beginnings of the National Wilderness Preservation System.  Available at:  http://www.wilderness.net/NWPS/fastfacts.  Accessed January 2, 2018.

On January 1, 1970, President Richard Nixon signed into law the National Environmental Policy Act, now known universally by its acronym—NEPA.  NEPA is considered Magna Carta for the  environment in the United States.

NEPA is a remarkably short law—only 7 pages—considering the major impact that it has had on government actions.  When passed, the law accomplished three things.  First, it established “a national policy which will encourage productive and enjoyable harmony between man and his environment.”  Second, it established a Council on Environmental Quality in the White House to oversee all environmental matters; this was intended to be the major action item in the law.  Third, it required every significant government action to be accompanied by a statement of the impacts of that action; in practice, this has turned out to be the overwhelmingly most significant part of the law.

The law was the brainchild of Senator Henry “Scoop” Jackson, a Democrat from the state of Washington.  Jackson served in Congress for 43 years, first in the House of Representatives and later in the Senate.  During the 1960s, Jackson joined with others in the developing environmental movement.  Distressed particularly over conflicting government actions in the Everglades—Interior trying to protect the area as a national park while the Army Corps of Engineers tried to drain it—Jackson decided the nation needed a formal declaration of its intent to protect the environment and a mechanism to make sure government projects weren’t working at cross purposes.  The Council on Environmental Quality was to perform that role.

When first proposed in Congress, Jackson’s act did not include the idea of environmental impact statements.  But after passing with almost unanimous consent in both houses, the reconciliation process added the requirement for reviewing every major action for its environmental consequences.  Later observers have suggested that the act would never have passed had Jackson or other legislators understood what the environmental impact statement would become.  Nonetheless, it passed overwhelmingly.

President Nixon signed the bill with great fanfare.  He noted on signing that it was “particularly fitting that my first official act in this new decade is to approve the National Environmental Policy Act.”  Casting the law as an anti-pollution measure, Nixon said, “The 1970s must absolutely be the years when America pays its debt to the past by reclaiming the purity of its air, its waters and our living environment.  It is literally now or never.”

Indeed, the time was now.  NEPA had immediate far-ranging impacts.  It spawned a series of environmental organizations, like the Environmental Defense Fund and the Natural Resources Defense Council, that began to sue the government for its failure to comply with the law.  These lawsuits established that environmental impact statements needed to be serious, comprehensive and expertly performed analyses, not back-of-the-envelope bureaucratic paperwork.  Consequently, hundreds of federal projects in the initial years were stopped or stalled.  The Army Corps of Engineers estimated that in the first five years of NEPA, 350 of its projects had been stopped, delayed or changed because of the law.  Today, of course, federal agencies take environmental impacts seriously, and have incorporated them as core elements of their planning.

Initially, the Council on Environmental Quality (CEQ) also played a major role in establishing and directing federal environmental policy.  The large series of environmental laws passed during the 1970s were often led by the CEQ.  Since then, however, as new agencies, programs and staffs were established to implement those laws (notably the Environmental Protection Agency itself), the CEQ has become peripheral to the nation’s overall environmental programming.

References:

Alm, Alvin L.  1988.  NEPA:  Past, Present, and Future.  EPA Web Archive.  Available at:  https://archive.epa.gov/epa/aboutepa/1988-article-nepa-past-present-and-future.html.  Accessed January 2, 2018.

Energy.gov.  The National Environmental Policy Act of 1969.  Available at:  https://energy.gov/nepa/downloads/national-environmental-policy-act-1969.  Accessed January 2, 2018.

Kershner, Jim.  2011.  NEPA, the National Environmental Policy Act.  History Link, 8/272011.  Available at:  http://www.historylink.org/File/9903.  Accessed January 2, 2018.

Trevor Kincaid called himself an “omnologist,” a biologist interested in everything.  His legacy proves out his assertion, as he made enormous contributions to entomology and fisheries, both in taxonomy and practical applications.

Trevor Kincaid was born in Ontario in 1872 (died 1970).  His family fell on hard times and moved west to find better fortune in Olympia, Washington, when he was 17.  He worked a variety of jobs before eventually enrolling at the University of Washington in 1894, at the age of 22.  He proved to be an exceptional student, studying entomology and discovering several insect species before he graduated.  He gained a regional and national reputation while still an undergraduate.

In fact, it took him some time to graduate.  Before he could complete his degree, he was invited to accompany Stanford University President David Starr Jordan in 1897 on an expedition to Alaska as part of the American Fur Seal Commission.  There he studied the conditions of the fur seal of the Pribilof Islands.  Jordan was so impressed by Kincaid that he tried to convince him to transfer to Stanford.  But the University of Washington intervened, doubling his salary as a research assistant.

Two years later, Kincaid was again tempted by an Alaskan expedition.  He was invited as one of 23 scientists to be part of the Harriman Alaska Expedition, the youngest person to accompany the likes of John Muir (learn more about Muir here) and John Burroughs .  He later remarked that as the expedition was leaving the dock, “my classmates were lining up to receive their diplomas.”  He chose well, however, studying the rich insect life of glaciers in Alaska for two months.  “The presence of a glacier,” he observed, “does not necessarily mean the absence of life.” In the succeeding years, he described and named 344 new insect species from that expedition.

In 1901, he became a faculty member at the University of Washington, where he stayed throughout his career, retiring as head of the Department of Zoology in 1937 at the mandatory age of 65.  His “Adventures of an Omnologist,” as he termed his informal autobiography, began in earnest at the university.  In 1903, he established what is now known as the Friday Harbor Laboratories, a research and teaching station on Puget Sound that has become synonymous with world-class field education.  On behalf of the government, in 1908, he was sent to Russia and Japan to identify and bring back a natural enemy of the invasive gypsy moth that was eating the forests and crops of New England.  He succeeded, and the parasite was bred and used for decades by the U.S. government to control gypsy moths.

In 1911, he transferred his interests to fisheries.  Specifically, he was charged with bringing the declining Puget Sound oyster fisheries back to profitability.  Attempts to farm Atlantic oysters failed in Washington, so Kincaid went again to Japan and returned with specimens of Pacific oysters.  These thrived in Puget Sound and became the basis for a renewed oyster farming industry.  After his retirement from the university, Kincaid invested in these fisheries, so that he thrived as well!  His ongoing work in fisheries formed the basis of the University of Washington’s College of Fisheries, one of the world’s leaders in both theoretical and applied research.

Kincaid’s influence on entomology and fisheries were substantial.  Many insect species are named after him, as is the building housing the University of Washington’s Department of Biology.

References:

Archives West.  Trevor Kincaid papers, 1890-1975.  Available at:  http://archiveswest.orbiscascade.org/ark:/80444/xv55081.  Accessed December 20, 2017.

Public Broadcasting Service.  Trevor Kincaid, 1872-1970.  Available at:  http://www.pbs.org/harriman/1899/1899_part/participantkincaid.html.  Accessed December 20, 2017

Chico Mendes, Brazilian rainforest advocate, was born December 15, 1944.  Mendes was murdered three days before Christmas in 1988, the victim of animosity over his work to protect Brazilian rainforests from deforestation.

Francisco Alves Mendes Filho—always known as Chico—was born into a rubber-tapping family in the western border region of Brazil, in the state of Acre.  Rubber-tapping is the process of cutting shallow groves in a rubber tree and collecting the sap that oozes out of the wound.  Rubber-tapping began in the Amazon in the late 1880s, as uses of the sap as an industrial product became commonplace.  The sap was melted into round balls about the size of a basketball over an open fire by the rubber tappers and sold to local wholesalers to export to Europe and America.  The congealed sap—known as latex and later rubber—found worldwide use as the coating for waterproof clothing, insulation for electrical wires and the raw material of automobile tires.

The Brazilian state of Acre was the center of rubber tapping for many decades.  Acre’s unusually fertile soils grew rubber trees to larger size and at higher densities than elsewhere in the rainforest.  Mendes became a rubber tapper as a young boy, helping his family sustain a lifestyle based on tapping rubber, gathering Brazil nuts and subsistence hunting and farming.  Like others in the area, Mendes and his family were dependent on having access to large tracts of virgin forestland, guaranteed to them by Brazilian law.

But desires by the government to make the rainforest more productive led to misguided policies to give large acreages to ranchers who began cutting down the forest in favor of cattle-grazing pastures.  Mendes objected to this approach, and he organized labor unions of rubber tappers to fight what he considered illegal land grabs and logging.

As Mendes’ advocacy succeeded and grew, he organized peaceful protests—called “empates”—staged to prevent logging from occurring on local lands.  Along the way, he organized schools, medical clinics and other social improvement programs for rural communities, in concert with the progressive and liberal Catholic Church.  These activities gradually gained the attention of the U.S. conservation community, which was looking for charismatic leaders who could put a human face on the rainforest conservation message.  Chico Mendes fit the bill.  Under sponsorship of the Environmental Defense Fund, Mendes traveled to the U.S. and England to promote rainforest protection.

Within Brazil, he developed the idea of “extractive reserves.”  Rather than preserving the rainforest, Mendes opted for sustainable utilization, allowing rubber tappers and other rural residents to stay on the land and use it for traditional purposes.  He convinced the World Bank and other development agencies to include extractive reserves as an element of their programs.

However popular this idea was to conservationists, it was equally hated by land developers in Brazil.  On December 22, 1988, gunmen for an infamous Brazilian rancher and criminal shot and killed Mendes as he walked out of his back door to take a shower.

If the murder of Mendes was meant to stop efforts to preserve rainforests, it had exactly the opposite effect.  Mendes’ death made global news and thousands attended his funeral on Christmas day.  Extracted reserves are now a standard tool of conservation, and the nation of Brazil has adopted re-forestation, not de-forestation, as its official forest policy.

References:

Nielsen, Larry A.  2017.  Nature’s Allies—8 Conservationists Who Changed Our World.  Island Press, 255 pages.

The Baiji porpoise (Lipotes vexillifer) was a small freshwater aquatic mammal that lived exclusively in the Yangtze River, China.  On December 13, 2006, a group of scientists who had been conducting an intensive study to locate Baiji declared that the animal was extinct.

The definitive extinction of a species, of course, can never be totally confirmed, especially an aquatic species.  Because we cannot definitively survey every part of a large water body at one instant, the possibly always exists that a survey could miss some specimens of a species.  This particular survey, however, was performed according to exacting statistical methods using modern hydro-acoustic technology.

The Baiji has been known throughout recorded history in the Yangtze River.  It was a relatively small porpoise, about the size of an adult human.  It had a stocky body, with a long narrow beak.  Baiji generally lived in small groups of fewer than five individuals.  It was a predator, feeding on fish of many species and at all locations in the river.  Individuals generally lived in areas of slower current, such as eddies and the confluence of tributaries with the main stem of the Yangtze River.  It was the only species in its genus, the name of which translates as “left behind” in Greek, denoting the restricted range of the species.

It was called the goddess of the river in earlier generations, protecting the safety of fishermen and aiding their catches.  Unfortunately, accidental catches of Baiji during fishing for other species greatly reduced its populations.  This, along with the continued development of the Yangtze River for hydropower and river transportation, continued to drive Baiji populations lower and lower in recent decades.  The last confirmed sighting of a Baiji was in 2002.  The IUCN Red List categorizes the Baiji porpoise as critically endangered, but notes that extinct has already probably occurred.

The extinction of the Baiji represents the first extinction of a cetacean (whales, dolphins, and porpoises) at the hands of humans.  It is also the first extinction of a large mammal in the last fifty years.  But it is not likely to remain the last.  Another freshwater porpoise in the Yangtaze River, the Yantze River finless porpoise, has now been declared critically endangered as its numbers have fallen below 100.  And another small dolphin—the vaquita or Gulf of California porpoise—that lives only in the upper reaches of the Gulf of California is considered the next most endangered marine mammal.

References:

Arklive.  Baiji (Lipotes vexillifer).  Available at:  http://www.arkive.org/baiji/lipotes-vexillifer/.  Accessed December 13, 2017.

IUCN.  2017.  Lipotes vexillifer.  Available at:  http://www.iucnredlist.org/details/full/12119/0.  Accessed December 13, 2017.

Lovgren, Stefan.  2006.  China’s rate river dolphin now extinct, experts announce.  Natinal Geographic News, December 14, 2006.  Available at:  http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2006/12/061214-dolphin-extinct.html.  Accessed December 12, 2016.

Turvey, Samuel T., et al.  2007.  First human –caused extinction of a cetacean species?  Biology Letters October 22, 2007.  Available at:  http://rsbl.royalsocietypublishing.org/content/3/5/537.short.  Accessed December 12, 2016

On December 12, 2015, the 197 nations that are party to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change approved unanimously to proceed with the “Paris Agreement.”  The agreement represented a milestone in the word’s commitment to controlling greenhouse gas emissions.

In 1994, most nations in the world agreed to a collaborative approach to addressing climate change.  That agreement was called the UNFCCC—the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change.  Since then, numerous related agreements have been established relating to various aspects of climate change, including the 1997 Kyoto Protocol and the 2009 Copenhagen Accord.  Leading into the Copenhagen discussions, hopes were high that significant, binding action would be taken on climate change.  In the end, most observers considered the Copenhagen Accord a hollow victory.

That changed in 2015 at a meeting of the nations in Paris, France.  This historic agreement was stimulated by a bi-lateral agreement of the United States and China—the two largest emitters of greenhouse gases, making up about 40% of worldwide emissions—that convinced others that together they could make a difference.  Although the Paris Agreement was created by acclimation on December 12, 2015, it required that 55 nations, covering at least 55% of worldwide emissions, ratify the agreement before it would take effect.  That threshold was reached on October 4, 2016, and the agreement entered into force 30 days later.  As of today, 170 nations have ratified the agreement.

The Paris Agreement includes the following specific items:

• The immediate goal is to seek changes in emissions that will keep global temperature rise below 2 degrees Centigrade (3.6 degrees Fahrenheit) by the end of the century.
• A more ambitious goal includes attempting to keep the temperature increase below 1.5 degrees Centigrade.
• Individual nations make their own voluntary commitments to reducing emissions of greenhouse gases, but these commitments need to be explicit, quantitative and monitored.
• Developed nations will contribute a minimum of $100 billion US to help developing countries reduce their emissions as their economies develop.
• Nations will work together to seek a peak in global emissions—and a subsequent long-term reduction—as soon as possible.

Most experts consider the Paris Agreement a major positive step in confronting the global impacts of increasing temperatures.  Most developed nations have joined the process with enthusiasm, recognizing that common action is needed and that a transition from a fossil-fuel economy is a necessary step in their further economic evolution.  Theresa May, the UK Prime Minister said the following:

“There is a clear moral imperative for developed economies such as the UK to help those around the world who stand to lose most from the consequences of manmade climate change. But by putting the UK at the forefront of efforts to cut carbon emissions and develop clean energy, we can also make the most of new economic opportunities. And by taking action to create a secure natural environment, we are fulfilling a duty we owe to the next generation.”

While former US President Barack Obama was a strong proponent of the Paris Agreement, current US President Donald Trump is not.  He has declared his intention to withdraw the U.S. from the Agreement (under the terms of the agreement, withdrawal is not allowed until 2020).  Nonetheless, other nations of the world remain committed to the agreement, with French President Macron providing global leadership.  Many U.S. cities and major corporations have also pledged to continue acting in good faith with the ideas and ideals of the Paris Agreement.

References:

Center for Climate and Energy Solutions.  COP 15 Copenhagen.  Available at:  https://www.c2es.org/content/cop-15-copenhagen/.  Accessed December 12, 2017.

Domonoske, Camila.  2017.  So What Exactly Is In The Paris Climate Accord?  NPR, June 1, 2017.  Available at:  https://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2017/06/01/531048986/so-what-exactly-is-in-the-paris-climate-accord.  Accessed December 12, 2017.

May, Theresa.  2017.  It’s Britain’s duty to help nations hit by climate change.  The Guardian, 11 December 2017.  Available at:  https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2017/dec/12/theresa-may-uk-green-economy.  Accessed December 12, 2017.

UN Framework Convention on Climate Change.  2015.  Paris Agreement.  Available at:  https://unfccc.int/files/essential_background/convention/application/pdf/english_paris_agreement.pdf.  Accessed December 12, 2017.

UN Framework Convention on Climate Change. The Paris Agreement.  Available at:  http://unfccc.int/paris_agreement/items/9485.php.  Accessed December 12, 2017.

The United Nations has declared December 11 each year as International Mountain Day.  Celebrated since 2003, International Mountain Day recognizes the critical importance of mountain ecosystems for assuring the sustainability of the earth.

Mountains comprise about a quarter of the earth’s land surface outside Antarctica and are home to about 13% of the earth’s human population.  Mountains are much more important than those percentages, however, as they influence the resources upon which most of the earth’s ecosystems depend.  Mountains affect weather systems, creating both wet and dry ecosystems in their shadows.  Mountains are the source of 60-80% of the world’s surface supply of freshwater, which is cycled continuously due to the role of mountains in hydrologic processes.

Mountains are also the home for major sources of renewable energy.  Hydropower, which supplies about 20% of all electricity today, originates largely in mountains, where high-gradient streams are dammed to capture the kinetic energy of falling water. High winds that often accompany mountains are reliable sources of wind energy.  Mountains in dry tropical areas are also often major sites for solar power development.

Biodiversity is exceptionally high in mountain regions.  The compression of different habitat types as elevation changes means that many kindss of ecosystems are represented in a small geographic region and that pockets of unique habitats exist where special combinations of temperature, moisture, landform and exposure occur.  About 25 % of the earth’s total biodiversity occurs in mountains—but 50% of biodiversity hotspots occur there.  The alpine region, above the tree line, is especially diverse in unique plant species.

The vast majority (90%) of humans inhabiting mountainous regions live in developing countries.  Most live in poverty, occasioned by the isolation and low productivity of mountain ecosystems.  The local communities in mountain regions have evolved unique ways of life based on their native understanding of the local ecology, finding ways to grow food and produce exportable crops—coffee, honey, herbs, spices, dyes, medicine, cosmetics and handicrafts—to support their families.

The UN Food and Agriculture Organization takes responsibility for organizing and promoting International Mountain Day.  A new theme is selected annually.  The 2017 theme is “Mountains under Pressure:  climate, hunger, migration.”  The theme recognizes that mountain ecosystems—and, consequently, mountain peoples—are highly vulnerable to climate change, climate variability, and climate-related disasters.  FAO is using the theme as the centerpiece for a global meeting on mountains in December, 2017, with the goal of generating a new approach to mountain sustainability.

References:

Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations.  2017.  International Mountain Day.  Available at : http://www.fao.org/international-mountain-day/key-messages/en/.  Accessed December 12, 2017.

Spehn, Eva M., et al.  2010.  Mountain Biodiversity and global change.  Institute of Botany, University of Basel, Basel, Switzerland.  Available at:  http://www.fao.org/docrep/017/i2868e/i2868e00.pdf.  Accessed December 12, 2017.