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The Deadliest US Wildfire in a Century Could Also Take a High Toll on Maui Wildlife
Scientists warn that debris from the Maui fires pose a signficant threat to vulnerable coral reefs.
Aug 18, 2023
The wildfires that engulfed the town of Lahaina, Maui, last week killed at least 111 people. But it's not only human lives that could be lost.
Scientists say that forecast rains could wash the ash and toxic debris from the fires into the ocean, where they could have a devastating impact on marine ecosystems that are already stressed by pollution and the climate crisis.
"You have a reef that is already damaged by many other things and then you have a sedimentation event on top of that," California Academy of Sciences ichthyology curator Luiz Rocha told The Guardian Friday. "A lot more coral are going to die."
"Keeping those reefs safe is one of our higher priorities."
The fire debris pose several threats to the reefs. For one, the corals may accidentally gobble up pollutants in the fire debris, mistaking them for plankton.
"We don't know what was in those houses, and a lot of times when things burn and when they mix together, they can form other things that can be dangerous," U.S. Coast Guard Pacific Strike Team Lieutenant Trent Brown told The Garden Island Wednesday of the contents of potential runoff.
If those toxins end up in the water, it could be devastating for the reefs.
"The corals are attached to the bottom of the ocean, they cannot move," Jennifer Smith, director of the Marine Biology Research Division at University of California, San Diego, told NBC Bay Area Tuesday. "So if you were to rain a bunch of sediment, ash, debris on top of them, they could essentially become smothered. Add to that a lot of this ash and debris could have chemical toxins."
Beyond smothering the reefs, the sediment could also provide food for algal blooms that would block the sunlight.
"It is going to heavily damage the coral reefs," Rocha told The Guardian further. "They depend on clear water to survive."
One dangerous pollutant has already entered the water because of the fires: oil. The oil has spilled from boats in the Lahaina Marina that sank during the disaster, and the U.S. Coast Guard is working to contain it, as well as prevent any runoff from reaching the reefs, by setting up booms around storm drains and the marina itself.
"Keeping those reefs safe is one of our higher priorities," Brown told The Garden Island. "I know that's a very valuable natural resource here in the Hawaiian Islands, and that's what all that boom is there for—to try to minimize any impacts for those reefs, either from physical debris or sorts of toxic chemicals."
West Maui's reefs are vital economically for attracting tourism, culturally for their importance to Indigenous Hawaiians, and ecologically for their role in the islands' broader ocean community, The Guardian explained. They spawn coral that help build reefs in the rest of Maui, Lanai, Molokai, and Kahoolawe, and one threatened reef—the Olowalu—hosts the largest population of manta rays in the U.S.
"These reefs have high concentrations of endemic marine species that don't live anywhere else in the world," Rob Ferguson, an expert in coral reef watershed management who works with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's coral reef conservation program, told The Guardian.
Above the waves, the fires also took a devastating toll on domesticated animals.
Maui Humane Society head Lisa Labrecque told reporters Monday that residents lost around 3,000 pets during the blaze, as Vox reported.
"Our veterinary, humane enforcement, and search and rescue teams are reporting back every day that there are many stray animals. Cats, dogs, rabbits, tortoises, birds, livestock etc.," the group wrote in a Facebook post Thursday.
In a statement Wednesday, the national Humane Society said that while it was hard to gauge the exact number of animal casualties, "it's likely the toll is significant."
"Thankfully," the group added, "local organizations such as the Maui Humane Society and Hawaii Veterinary Medical Association are working with others to find animal survivors and give them a fighting chance."
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Green Groups Call on Biden Admin to End Support for 'Scientifically Bankrupt' Wildlife Killing
"The FWS is tasked with preventing extinctions, using sound science when making decisions to prevent those extinctions, and with being accountable to the entire public—not funding controversial predator-control actions for the purported benefit of a few."
Aug 15, 2023
A rulemaking petition demanding an end to federal support for the removal of wolves and bears from states such as Alaska has been languishing at the U.S. Interior Department for almost two years, nearly three dozen conservation groups and scientists said in a letter to Interior Secretary Deb Haaland on Tuesday as they raised alarm about a recent killing operation.
Led by Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility (PEER), the Humane Society of the United States, and the Global Indigenous Council, 35 organizations wrote to the secretary to raise alarm about the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service's (FWS) continued funding of "irresponsible and controversial predator-control projects."
Nearly 30 groups
signed the petition in September 2021 that demanded a rulemaking process to stop federal subsidies from supporting so-called "conservation projects" in which state officials oversee the killing of certain predator species—regardless of their federal protected status—in order to boost populations of other species.
"Since its submission the petitioners have not received a response," wrote the groups on Tuesday. "We request a meeting with the secretary to discuss the rulemaking petition."
The letter was sent two months after the Alaska Department of Fish and Game (ADFG) concluded a large-scale operation in which it gunned down 94 brown bears, including cubs, five black bears, and five wolves in order to increase "caribou calf recruitment" in southwestern Alaska. Caribou are often targeted by game hunters in the state.
Claiming to run a program aimed at boosting sustainability in Alaska, ADFG agents "shoot brown bears and black bears from helicopters, snare bears, and even shoot mother brown bears accompanied by cubs," wrote the groups. "Wolves face similar fates, and are targeted in the controversial 'Judas wolf' program in which radio-collared wolves who return to their pack enable ADFG agents to discover and eliminate the entire pack. The agency also aerial-guns wolves and poisons their pups in their dens."
The recent operation that took place in Alaska this spring appeared to be the largest of its kind in the state's history, with agents "inexplicably" killing at least four times as many brown bears as it had originally planned to.
The agency and other state game departments use federal aid that exceeds $1 billion annually to conduct such operations, according to PEER.
Haaland's rejection of the funding could help end the large-scale killings, the groups suggested Tuesday as they asked the interior secretary to meet with them.
Wendy Keefover, senior strategist for native carnivore protection for the Humane Society, said killing operations like the one that took place in Alaska "directly contradict federal wildlife policy," as the FWS is tasked with protecting species including brown bears and gray wolves and managing biodiversity.
"The Biden administration should suspend all further payments of federal funds to the Alaska Department of Fish and Game until its wildlife management complies with federal ecological standards," said Keefover.
Rick Steiner, board chair of PEER, also noted that killing operations are "economically counterproductive" in addition to being "scientifically bankrupt," as "millions of tourists travel to Alaska spending billions of dollars annually—just to catch a glimpse of Alaska's iconic bears and wolves in the wild."
The groups pointed to a letter signed by 55 wildlife scientists in 2018, which objected to the repeal of protections for carnivores in the interest of growing populations of caribou and other species—"privileging the human use" of wildlife "over all other considerations, including maintaining sustainable wildlife populations for future generations." The practice is ineffective, said the scientists, in addition to being disruptive of natural biodiversity.
"The scientific consensus for the last several decades has generally concluded that carnivores modulate ungulate prey populations and make them more vigorous, because predators remove the sick and weak animals which would die of other natural causes anyway, or because they reduce their competitors, including smaller wild carnivores such as coyotes, which prey on young ungulates," wrote the scientists. "Predator-control schemes, unpopular with both the Alaskan and American public are an unreliable and ineffective way to increase the abundance of ungulate."
In their letter to Haaland Monday, the groups warned that "the extinction crisis is not an abstraction; it is a clear and present danger and an impending catastrophe."
"The FWS is tasked with preventing extinctions, using sound science when making decisions to prevent those extinctions, and with being accountable to the entire public—not funding controversial predator-control actions for the purported benefit of a few," they wrote. "For these reasons, we urge your office to again consider our petition and meet with us to discuss the issues."
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Conservation Groups Slam Trump's 'Reprehensible' Reversal on Elephant Trophies Ban
The Interior Department said Wednesday it will allow hunters to import their elephant trophies from Africa
Nov 16, 2017
Animal-protection advocates were outraged on Thursday over the Trump administration's decision to reverse a ban on imported elephant trophies from Zambia and Zimbabwe.
The Elephant Project called the move "reprehensible" and declared, "One hundred elephants a day are already killed. This will lead to more poaching."
Although elephants are endangered species, hunters can pay government agencies in the two countries for permits to kill the animals if their expeditions are deemed to "benefit the conservation of certain species," according to the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Services, which announced the change on Wednesday.
According to the agency and groups like Safari Club International, a hunters' lobbying group which filed a lawsuit in 2014 to block an Obama-era ban on elephant trophies, hunting regulated by permits provides incentives to local communities to conserve the species and puts revenue back into conservation efforts.
Wayne Pacelle, president of the Human Society, called the permit system "a venal and nefarious pay-to-slay arrangement that Zimbabwe has set up with the trophy hunting industry" in a blog post, and noted conservationists' concerns over "lack of information about how money derived from trophy hunting by U.S. hunters is distributed within Zimbabwe." He argued that there is little evidence that so-called hunting regulations have a positive impact on conservation efforts.
"Zimbabwe's elephant population has declined six percent since 2001 and evidence shows that poaching has increased in areas where trophy hunting is permitted," Pacelle wrote, adding that if anyone should be able to hunt game in Africa, it should be the people who live there rather than wealthy Americans hunting for sport.
"What kind of message does it send to say to the world that poor Africans who are struggling to survive cannot kill elephants in order to use or sell their parts to make a living, but that it's just fine for rich Americans to slay the beasts for their tusks to keep as trophies?" wrote Pacelle.
The U.K.-based elephant-protection group Tusk Trust also drew attention to corruption in the system that allows permits for hunters. "Tusk continues to have major misgivings in the way trophy hunting is not properly regulated, and has been open to corrupt abuse of quota systems and unethical practices," said Charlie Mayhew, the group's chief executive, in a statement. "This is a setback in the fight to ban all illegal wildlife trade."
President Donald Trump's grown sons, Eric and Donald Jr., have both been roundly criticized for their enjoyment of trophy hunting over the years.
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