Download: Estuary News, July 2013 PDF
Writer and filmmaker Bill Belleville has made a career out of water. From the Dutch Antilles to Russia’s White Sea, Belleville has paddled and scuba dived places most people only dream about. But close to his Florida home, the sight of the partially restored Kissimmee River, channelized concrete on one side, green meandering stream on the other, was as memorable as anything he’d ever seen.
“I went up there and paddled,” Belleville says. “We could see the canal on one hand, and in the other direction was the river, and it was all the difference in the world.”
The partially restored Kissimmee River is a stark symbol of the choices facing Floridians. Black-necked stilts, storks, herons, cranes and spoon- bills have returned to the 43 miles of restored river, 320 species in all. But the Kissimmee is only part of the giant plumbing system that filters water to the Florida Everglades. In this ever-growing state, high demand for developable land means that full-scale restoration isn’t always possible. In some parts of Florida, putting the pieces together requires mimicking natural systems instead of restoring them.
Like California, Florida built its economy on the control of water. Historically, the Kissimmee River drained to Lake Okeechobee, which seasonally overflowed its banks, sending sheet flows south to the Everglades and west to the Gulf of Mexico. But over the last century, channels and levees drained 50 percent of the state’s wetlands, al- lowing them to be converted to sugar farms south of the lake and cattle ranches to the north. Big sugar is the most pressing problem: nutrients, notably phosphorus, threaten to convert the famous Everglades “river of grass” from sawgrass to cattails. But draining land for ranches north of Okeechobee also disrupted the natural hydrology.
Now the state is trying to reverse more than a century of environmental damage. While there has been only halting progress on ambitious deals to purchase land from the state’s two major sugar growers, former Florida governor Charlie Crist, who once promised to be “the Everglades governor” is planning to run for office again and finish the job. In the meantime, state agencies have worked with Big Sugar to institute farming practices that minimize nutrient pollution.
Cattle ranches in north Florida
are another story. Many ranchers are struggling economically, and, as the housing market improves, developers are eyeing vast tracts of agricultural land in the Kissimmee Basin. Outright purchase of the land surrounding the Kissimmee River may solve part of the problem, but probably won’t be sweeping or rapid enough
to save the region. In early 2012, the Department of Interior established an Everglades Headwaters National Wildlife Refuge and Conservation Area in the Kissimmee Basin with an initial donation of 10 acres. That may sound tiny, but eventually, the headwaters protected area is projected
to include 150,000 acres, including 100,000 acres of ranchland protected by easements.
The Interior Department’s plan is a tacit recognition that outright purchase of large tracts of ranch land doesn’t seem possible, politically or economically. Instead, the race is on to persuade ranchers to sell conservation easements, which means their land can become part of the headwaters protected area, as well as to restore wetlands on their property. Bill Belleville calls restoration “a work in progress.” One of Belleville’s recent films was a profile of Carey Lightsey, a rancher whose family’s holdings include 36,200 acres in Florida and Georgia.
Nearly a decade ago, Lightsey, who not only breeds cattle but also runs hunting trips on his land (Johnny Depp was one of his clients) became one of the first of the region’s landowners to protect his ranch through conservation easements.
As many have noted, Lightsey, who has won many awards for his work, sold development rights to his land when real estate values in Florida were sky high.
“I can’t understand why more ranchers don’t do this,” Lightsey says. “You have to focus on the big picture. You can’t think the whole thing is about money.”
But setting up conservation easements to fend off development is not enough. Many ranchers are working with the Natural Resources Conservation Service to do low-tech restoration work: digging ditches and building weirs to trap water. These simple measures create wildlife habitat and have the additional benefit of recharging groundwater.
In these days of scarce government funding, the farm bill has proved essential to Florida’s conservation efforts. Jenny Conner-Nelms, the government relations director for the Florida Nature Conservancy, has been instrumental in developing the strategy of funding restoration through the farm bill’s wetland reserve program, which has yielded $269 million to protect 50,000 acres in conservation easements in northern Florida.
“We have been extremely fortunate,” says Conner-Nelms. “Many people don’t realize that the farm bill is the largest amount of money from the federal government for the environment.”
When it comes to persuading ranchers to participate, it helps that the actual restoration is a fairly low-tech affair that doesn’t require major changes in agricultural practices, according to Greg Knecht, Director of Protection at the Na- ture Conservancy’s Tallahassee office. Initially, Knecht says, some ranchers were dubious. But as pastures became healthier and the water table rose, the program has gained adherents.
“The farmers are frustrated sometimes,” says Knecht. “It’s a case of ‘first you told us to drain it, now you’re telling us to fill it in?‘ But the reality is that water is going to drive the future of everything that happens in Florida.”
By Ariel Rubissow Okamoto
Nothing could be stranger than sitting in the dark with thousands of suits and heels, watching a parade of promises to decarbonize from companies and countries large and small, reeling from the beauties of big screen rainforests and indigenous necklaces, and getting all choked up.
It was day two of the September 2018 Global Climate Action Summit in San Francisco when I felt it.
At first I wondered if I was simply starstruck. Most of us labor away trying to fix one small corner of the planet or another without seeing the likes of Harrison Ford, Al Gore, Michael Bloomberg, Van Jones, Jerry Brown – or the ministers or mayors of dozens of cities and countries – in person, on stage and at times angry enough to spit. And between these luminaries a steady stream of CEOs, corporate sustainability officers, and pension fund managers promising percentages of renewables and profits in their portfolios dedicated to the climate cause by 2020-2050.
I tried to give every speaker my full attention: the young man of Vuntut Gwichin heritage from the edge of the Yukon’s Arctic National Wildlife Refuge who pleaded with us not to enter his sacred lands with our drills and dependencies; all the women – swathed in bright patterns and head-scarfs – who kept punching their hearts. “My uncle in Uganda would take 129 years to emit the same amount of carbon as an American would in one year,” said Oxfam’s Winnie Byanyima.
“Our janitors are shutting off the lights you leave on,” said Aida Cardenas, speaking about the frontline workers she trains, mostly immigrants, who are excited to be part of climate change solutions in their new country.
The men on the stage, strutting about in feathers and pinstripes, spoke of hopes and dreams, money and power. “The notion that you can either do good or do well is a myth we have to collectively bust,” said New Jersey Governor Phil Murphy whose state is investing heavily in offshore wind farms.
“Climate change isn’t just about risks, it’s about opportunities,” said Blackrock sustainable investment manager Brian Deese.
But it wasn’t all these fine speeches that started the butterflies. Halfway through the second day of testimonials, it was a slight white-haired woman wrapped in an azure pashmina that pricked my tears. One minute she was on the silver screen with Alec Baldwin and the next she taking a seat on stage. She talked about trees. How trees can solve 30% of our carbon reduction problem. How we have to stop whacking them back in the Amazon and start planting them everywhere else. I couldn’t help thinking of Dr. Seuss and his truffala trees. Jane Goodall, over 80, is as fierce as my Lorax. Or my daughter’s Avatar.
Analyzing my take home feeling from the event I realized it wasn’t the usual fear – killer storms, tidal waves, no food for my kids to eat on a half-baked planet – nor a newfound sense of hope – I’ve always thought nature will get along just fine without us. What I felt was relief. People were actually doing something. Doing a lot. And there was so much more we could do.
As we all pumped fists in the dark, as the presentations went on and on and on because so many people and businesses and countries wanted to STEP UP, I realized how swayed I had let myself be by the doomsday news mill.
“We must be like the river, “ said a boy from Bangladesh named Risalat Khan, who had noticed our Sierra watersheds from the plane. “We must cut through the mountain of obstacles. Let’s be the river!”
Or as Harrison Ford less poetically put it: “Let’s turn off our phones and roll up our sleeves and kick this monster’s ass.”
by Isaac Pearlman
Since California’s last state-led climate change assessment in 2012, the Golden State has experienced a litany of natural disasters. This includes four years of severe drought from 2012 to 2016, an almost non-existent Sierra Nevada snowpack in 2014-2015 costing $2.1 billion in economic losses, widespread Bay Area flooding from winter 2017 storms, and extremely large and damaging wildfires culminating with this year’s Mendocino Complex fire achieving the dubious distinction of the largest in state history. California’s most recent climate assessment, released August 27th, predicts that for the state and the Bay Area, we can expect even more in the future.
The California state government first began assessing climate impacts formally in 2006, due to an executive order by Governor Schwarzenegger. California’s latest iteration and its fourth overall, includes a dizzying array of 44 technical reports; three topical studies on climate justice, tribal and indigenous communities, and the coast and ocean; as well as nine region-specific analyses.
The results are alarming for our state’s future: an estimated four to five feet of sea level rise and loss of one to two-thirds of Southern California beaches by 2100, a 50 percent increase in wildfires over 25,000 acres, stronger and longer heat waves, and infrastructure like airports, wastewater treatment plants, rail and roadways increasingly likely to suffer flooding.
For the first time, California’s latest assessment dives into climate consequences on a regional level. Academics representing nine California regions spearheaded research and summarized the best available science on the variable heat, rain, flooding and extreme event consequences for their areas. For example, the highest local rate of sea level rise in the state is at the rapidly subsiding Humboldt Bay. In San Diego county, the most biodiverse in all of California, preserving its many fragile and endangered species is an urgent priority. Francesca Hopkins from UC Riverside found that the highest rate of childhood asthma in the state isn’t an urban smog-filled city but in the Imperial Valley, where toxic dust from Salton Sea disaster chokes communities – and will only become worse as higher temperatures and less water due to climate change dry and brittle the area.
According to the Bay Area Regional Report, since 1950 the Bay Area has already increased in temperature by 1.7 degrees Fahrenheit and local sea level is eight inches higher than it was one hundred years ago. Future climate will render the Bay Area less suitable for our evergreen redwood and fir forests, and more favorable for tolerant chaparral shrub land. The region’s seven million people and $750 billion economy (almost one-third of California’s total) is predicted to be increasingly beset by more “boom and bust” irregular wet and very dry years, punctuated by increasingly intense and damaging storms.
Unsurprisingly, according to the report the Bay Area’s intensifying housing and equity problems have a multiplier affect with climate change. As Bay Area housing spreads further north, south, and inland the result is higher transportation and energy needs for those with the fewest resources available to afford them; and acute disparity in climate vulnerability across Bay Area communities and populations.
“All Californians will likely endure more illness and be at greater risk of early death because of climate change,” bluntly states the statewide summary brochure for California’s climate assessment. “[However] vulnerable populations that already experience the greatest adverse health impacts will be disproportionately affected.”
“We’re much better at being reactive to a disaster than planning ahead,” said UC Berkeley professor and contributing author David Ackerly at a California Adaptation Forum panel in Sacramento on August 27th. “And it is vulnerable communities that suffer from those disasters. How much human suffering has to happen before it triggers the next round of activity?”
The assessment’s data is publicly available online at “Cal-adapt,” where Californians can explore projected impacts for their neighborhoods, towns, and regions.