Rewilding & Conservation News and Discussions

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One thing to always keep in in regards to California fires is how much fire is a part of the natural ecological process. Here, under certain conditions, nature has a way of re-wilding itself. Something the following article helps to illustrate.

An Azalea Grows in Paradise
by Ibe Liebenberg
February 6, 2025

Extract:

(Zócalo) On my first day as a seasonal firefighter in Paradise, California, they took me there…I had always known it as Head Dam, a mile-long, winding gravel road that zig-zags through outcroppings of serpentine rock.

I was living in the same house I had grown up in when I decided to become a seasonal firefighter in 2009. I memorized each turn of the six-switchback gravel road. On the other side of the canyon sat Sawmill Peak, staring down a thousand-plus feet over you and most of the valley. The steep hills were covered with 100-foot-tall ponderosa pine and black oak, and the understory densely matted in leaf litter and mostly open with little brush. I didn’t notice much else. Because I only paid attention to how fast I could make it up the hill...

After a few fire seasons, I started to look around more on the way down. One day, about 20 feet down a steep dry creek bed, I spotted clusters of white flowers on a thin branched shrub with no leaves. I froze. I slid down the hill. I couldn’t believe it: a deciduous azalea. I grew up with an appreciation for plants—I majored in ornamental horticulture in community college—and loved azaleas and rhododendrons in particular. I immediately took out my phone and found out that this was the only azalea native to California. They bloom for a week or two, if we are lucky. I visited the azalea each day after that while it was blooming, and after, making sure I spotted those light green leaves.
…
In September 2024, I moved back to Paradise. Our new property was completely bare. We planted MacNab cypress, Whitethorn ceanothus, and Western azaleas—the same plants I see on the station hike. Some of them require fire to reproduce. We still live with the fear of not having insurance and the possibilities of destruction and hear the evacuation test siren on the 15th of every month. But with time and the experience of loss, I am also able to seek out and admire what could be gone again.

Read more here: https://www.zocalopublicsquare.org/aza ... mp- fire/

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California’s Marine Protected Areas Boost Fish Populations Across the State
February 10, 2025

Introduction:

(Eurekalert) (Santa Barbara, Calif.) — It’s 1999, the 21st century is on the horizon, and California has big plans for marine conservation. New legislation has presented a mandate to establish an ambitious network of marine protected areas (MPAs) unlike anywhere else in the world. The goal is to craft strategic protections to safeguard the state’s marine life for preservation and economic benefits alike.

Now 25 years later, an international team of researchers, led by scientists at UC Santa Barbara, have evaluated the network’s effects across different species and habitats. “What everyone wants to know is do MPAs work?” said Joshua Smith, lead author of a new study on the matter published in Conservation Biology.

The study confirmed many benefits an MPA can confer to sea life, especially those targeted by fisheries. The authors found that older MPAs, and those with a greater diversity of habitats, showed the highest amount of fish biomass, especially in targeted species, like rockfishes. Stronger protections also correlated with more pronounced results. With international targets aiming to protect more of the world’s oceans, the findings can inform approaches to MPA design and networks that span multiple ecosystems.

An ambitious proposal

Marine protected areas have emerged as a leading tool for protecting ocean ecosystems. But there’s a lot of diversity in the character, size and regulations of MPAs around the world, from a total ban on all extractive or destructive activities to various regulations on infrastructure, water quality, shipping, recreation and so forth.
In 1999, the California Legislature passed the Marine Life Protection Act (MLPA), which required the state to overhaul its marine reserves. The legislation prompted the creation of the first statewide MPA network in the United States, and perhaps the most extensive in the world. “This huge, state-wide network, and its comprehensive design process, was sort of revolutionary at the time,” said co-author Cori Lopazanski, a doctoral student at UCSB’s Bren School of Environmental Science & Management.

Read more of the Eurekalert article here: https://www.eurekalert.org/news-releases/1073237

For a presentation of study results as published in Conservation Biology: https://conbio.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/ ... obi.14435

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ALT National Parks Service Mission Statement

Extract:

(OurParks.org) The AltNPS movement was rooted in the belief in scientific integrity, the importance of environmental conservation, and the value of our National Parks.

Our Parks was founded by the Alt National Park Service, a grassroots movement dedicated to preserving the mission of national parks, especially in periods of policy uncertainty. Their advocacy for responsible stewardship and raising public awareness around the challenges facing our parks laid the foundation for our mission.

Open Message to President Trump: You've previously shut down our social media use and eroded environmental protections, but you can't silence our collective voice. "Our Parks" is our stand to safeguard our environment and prevent four more years of destruction. Join us to protect our national parks for future generations.

Read more here: https://ourparks.org

[wjfox]

Trump firings hit Great Lakes sea lamprey program, Michigan forestry workers

February 19, 2025

• Efforts to keep a notorious Great Lakes invader at bay could be imperiled by the Trump administration’s mass firing spree

• Sea lamprey nearly wiped out the Great Lakes fishery in the 1900s, and are only kept in check today through annual chemical treatments in hundreds of rivers

• Dozens of workers focused on lamprey control were among scores of Michigan federal workers fired without notice in the past week

https://www.bridgemi.com/michigan-envir ... n-forestry



Credit: Great Lakes Fishery Commission

[firestar464]

US lost a fifth of its butterflies within two decades

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cwyjkn729gpo

[wjfox]

New forest to be created in west of England, with 20m trees planted by 2050

Fri 21 Mar 2025 00.01 GMT

A new Western Forest is to be created across a swathe of the west of England from the Cotswolds to the Mendips, the government has said.

The project, one of the government’s promised national forests, will create 2,500 hectares (6,200 acres) of woodland by 2030 across five priority areas in Wiltshire, Gloucestershire, Somerset and Bristol, with plans to plant 20m trees by 2050.

The government said the announcement was a first step in meeting its manifesto commitment, and would bring trees and woodlands closer to people in cities and towns such as Bristol, Gloucester and Swindon.

The scheme is the first new national forest for 30 years – following on from the establishment of the National Forest in the Midlands – and aims to increase woodlands and tree cover to boost wildlife, help to mitigate the climate crisis, and provide access to nature for people.

https://www.theguardian.com/environment ... trees-2050



Nature Photographers Ltd/Alamy

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Scientists Revive the Dire Wolf, or Something Close

Source: NY Times

For more than a decade, scientists have chased the idea of reviving extinct species, a process sometimes called de-extinction. Now, a company called Colossal Biosciences appears to have done it, or something close, with the dire wolf, a giant, extinct species made famous by the television series “Game of Thrones.”

In 2021, a separate team of scientists managed to retrieve DNA from the fossils of dire wolves, which went extinct about 13,000 years ago. With the discovery of additional DNA, the Colossal researchers have now edited 20 genes of gray wolves to imbue the animals with key features of dire wolves. They then created embryos from the edited gray-wolf cells, implanted them in surrogate dog mothers and waited for them to give birth.

The result is three healthy wolves — two males that are 6 months old and one female that is 2 months old, named Romulus, Remus and Khaleesi — that have some traits of dire wolves.

They are big, for one thing, and have dense, pale coats not found in gray wolves. Colossal, which was valued at $10 billion in January, is keeping the wolves on a private 2,000-acre facility at an undisclosed location in the northern United States.

Read more: https://www.nytimes.com/2025/04/07/scie ... ction.html

[wjfox]

Scientists Revive the Dire Wolf, or Something Close

Source: NY Times

For more than a decade, scientists have chased the idea of reviving extinct species, a process sometimes called de-extinction. Now, a company called Colossal Biosciences appears to have done it, or something close, with the dire wolf, a giant, extinct species made famous by the television series “Game of Thrones.”

In 2021, a separate team of scientists managed to retrieve DNA from the fossils of dire wolves, which went extinct about 13,000 years ago. With the discovery of additional DNA, the Colossal researchers have now edited 20 genes of gray wolves to imbue the animals with key features of dire wolves. They then created embryos from the edited gray-wolf cells, implanted them in surrogate dog mothers and waited for them to give birth.

The result is three healthy wolves — two males that are 6 months old and one female that is 2 months old, named Romulus, Remus and Khaleesi — that have some traits of dire wolves.

They are big, for one thing, and have dense, pale coats not found in gray wolves. Colossal, which was valued at $10 billion in January, is keeping the wolves on a private 2,000-acre facility at an undisclosed location in the northern United States.

Read more: https://www.nytimes.com/2025/04/07/scie ... ction.html

[firestar464]

oh yeah what is the point of doing this

[firestar464]

Rare grasshopper thought extinct rediscovered after 40 years

https://phys.org/news/2025-05-rare-gras ... vered.html

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California Tribes Celebrate Historic Dam Removal: ‘More Successful Than We Ever Imagined’
by Gabrielle Canon
January 3, 2025

Introduction:

...

Read more here: https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/cali ... fa&ei=34

More on that:

Largest Dam Removal Project in the World Triggers Return of Salmon After Years of Campaigning
by Eleanor Higgs
May 7, 2025

Introduction:

(IFL Science) The largest dam removal project in US history, and likely the world, was completed at the end of last year, with the removal of four huge dams. But with the Klamath River now running free, the river's restoration is only just beginning. The project is featured in the new season of the BBC’s Our Changing Planet, and we spoke to presenter Liz Bonnin about traveling to the US to discover more about the scale of the demolition and how the impact of the dams has affected the river and the tribal communities that live along the Klamath.

The Klamath River has a winding, approximately 414-kilometer journey (257 miles) between Oregon and California’s north coast, where it flows into the Pacific Ocean. It once supported a healthy population of fish, including Chinook salmon, coho salmon, and steelhead trout that helped to feed the Yurok and Karuk tribes, as well as many other Indigenous tribal groups that live along the river and rely on the salmon as a mainstay of their diets.

However, between 1903 and 1962, hydroelectric dams were built across the length of the river, by the electric utilities company PacifiCorp. The goal was to generate enough electricity to power nearby homes but the dams had unintended consequences for both the Indigenous communities, and the fish that called the river home.

The four dams in the lower portion of the river were called Copco No. 1, completed in 1918, followed by Copco No. 2 in 1925, the J.C. Boyle Dam in 1958, and Iron Gate Dam in 1964.

However, these four dams significantly impacted the health of the river and the fish, preventing the salmon and trout species from reaching their spawning grounds. In 1997, coho salmon were listed under the federal Endangered Species Act in the Klamath. Most famous of all was the population loss suffered by the Chinook salmon.

The article goes on to discuss re-wilding efforts undertaken in conjunction with the removal of the dams, as well as the reappearance of Chinook Salmon in the river basin.

Read more here: https://www.iflscience.com/largest-dam ... ng-79086

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A Journey Down the Reborn Klamath River
by Gabrielle Canon
June 7, 2025

Introduction:

(The Guardian) Bill Cross pulled his truck to the side of a dusty mountain road and jumped out to scan a stretch of rapids rippling through the hillsides below.

As an expert and a guide, Cross had spent more than 40 years boating the Klamath River, etching its turns, drops and eddies into his memory. But this run was brand new. On a warm day in mid-May, he would be one of the very first to raft it with high spring flows.

Last year, the final of four hydroelectric dams on the Klamath River were removed in the largest project of its kind in US history. Forged through the footprint of reservoirs that kept parts of the Klamath submerged for more than a century, the river that straddles the California-Oregon border has since been reborn.

The dam removal marked the end of a decades-long campaign led by the Yurok, Karuk and Klamath tribes, along with a wide range of environmental NGOs and fishing advocacy groups, to convince owner PacifiCorp to let go of the ageing infrastructure. The immense undertaking also required buy-in from regulatory agencies, state and local governments, businesses and the communities that used to live along the shores of the bygone lakes.

As the flows were released and the river found its way back to itself, a new chapter of recovery – complete with new challenges – emerged.

Read more here: https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/the- ... cb&ei=55

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Scientists Revive the Dire Wolf, or Something Close

...

Read more: https://www.nytimes.com/2025/04/07/scie ... ction.html

More on that:

Beyond De-extinction and Dire Wolves, Gene Editing Can Help Today’s Endangered Species
by Alex Erwin
June 6, 2025

Introduction:

(The Conversation) Have you been hearing about the dire wolf lately? Maybe you saw a massive white wolf on the cover of Time magazine or a photo of “Game of Thrones” author George R.R. Martin holding a puppy named after a character from his books.

The dire wolf, a large, wolflike species that went extinct about 12,000 years ago, has been in the news after biotech company Colossal claimed to have resurrected it using cloning and gene-editing technologies. Colossal calls itself a “de-extinction” company. The very concept of de-extinction is a lightning rod for criticism. There are broad accusations of playing God or messing with nature, as well as more focused objections that contemporary de-extinction tools create poor imitations rather than truly resurrected species.

While the biological and philosophical debates are interesting, the legal ramifications for endangered species conservation are of paramount importance. As a legal scholar with a Ph.D. in wildlife genetics, my work focuses on how we legally define the term “endangered species.” The use of biotechnology for conservation, whether for de-extinction or genetic augmentation of existing species, promises solutions to otherwise intractable problems. But it needs to work in harmony with both the letter and purpose of the laws governing biodiversity conservation.

Of dire wolves and de-extinction

What did Colossal actually do? Scientists extracted and sequenced DNA from Ice Age-era bones to understand the genetic makeup of the dire wolf. They were able to piece together around 90% of a complete dire wolf genome. While the gray wolf and the dire wolf are separated by a few million years of evolution, they share over 99.5% of their genomes.

Conclusion:

Biotechnology could never solve every conservation problem – especially habitat destruction. The ability to make “functional” copies of a species certainly does not lessen the urgency to respond to biodiversity loss, nor does it reduce human beings’ moral culpability. But to adequately respond to the ever-worsening biodiversity crisis, conservationists will need all available tools.

Read more here: https://theconversation.com/beyond-de- ... s-254670

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Dear DOGE, Tear Down Those Dams!
by Tom Zoellner
June 10, 2025

Introduction:

(Zócalo) No big government infrastructure project made an imprint on the landscape and economy of the West more than the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation’s 20th century dam-building spree, which peppered 490 dams across the country, created an agricultural civilization dependent on federal hydrology civil engineering, and brought about a welter of environmental difficulties after drying up dozens of once-healthy rivers.

Today, the agency claims a $1.4 billion budget to maintain its fleet of aging dams. It was perhaps inevitable that the Department of Government Efficiency, or DOGE, would seek to cut it down. Approximately 400 workers at the bureau—including dam tenders, emergency management specialists, and hydrologists—received “reduction in force” letters in March raising fears that poorly monitored dams could fail, creating catastrophic downstream flooding. This, just five weeks after President Donald Trump stoked fears of mismanagement by ordering billions of gallons of water released from two Central Valley dams, against the objections of officials, water experts, and farmers.

Turmoil in the federal dam management system represents potential disaster, but also a prime opportunity: It offers environmentalists an opening to make a vigorous case for dam removal—a move that could save costs and please business interests while achieving a longstanding goal of getting rid of the most harmful and obsolete blockages on Western rivers. The key, one vivid example suggests, is making a scientific initiative attractive in the political realm.

At a place called Fossil Creek in the high country of north-central Arizona, a gorgeous waterfall now tumbles near headwaters where an Arizona Public Service (APS) hydroelectric dam stood until 2005. Ask people swimming below the falls where the dam was located, and you’ll get some puzzled looks. “There was never any dam here,” said one, unaware he was standing right next to its remnants, masonry concealed under travertine deposits that give it every appearance of a natural falls.

Read more here: https://www.zocalopublicsquare.org/dog ... se-dams/

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[firestar464]

500 bird species face extinction within the next century, researchers warn

https://phys.org/news/2025-06-bird-spec ... ntury.html

[firestar464]

After a decade of death, Canadian scientists say they've found the sea star killer

https://www.msn.com/en-ca/health/other/ ... r-AA1JSPWC