When Chelsea Wood was a child, she would often collect Periwinkle snails on the shores of Long Island. 

“I used to pluck them off the rocks and put them in buckets and keep them as pets and then re-release them,” Wood said. “And I knew that species really well.”

It wasn’t until years later that Wood learned that those snails were teeming with parasites. 

“In some populations, 100 percent of them are infected, and 50 percent of their biomass is parasite,” Wood said. “So the snails that I had in my bucket as a child were not really snails. They were basically trematode [parasites] that had commandeered snail bodies for their own ends. And that blew my mind.”

Wood, now a parasite ecologist at the University of Washington, sometimes refers to parasites as “puppet masters,” and in many cases, it’s not an exaggeration. Some can mind-control their hosts, for example, causing mice to seek out the smell of cat pee. Others can shape-shift their hosts, physically changing them to look like food. And their ripple effects can reshape entire landscapes.

For centuries, people have thought of parasites as nature’s villains. They often infect people and livestock. In fact, parasites are by definition bad for their hosts, but today, more scientists are starting to think about parasites as forces for good.

“I don’t think anyone is born a parasitologist. No one grows up wanting to study worms,” Wood said. “Somewhere along the way, I like to say, they got under my skin. I just fell in love with them. I couldn’t believe that I’d gotten that far in my biology education and no one had ever mentioned to me that parasites are incredibly biodiverse, ubiquitous, everywhere.”

On a cloudy August morning, Wood took me to Titlow Beach in Washington state, one of her team’s research sites. Back in the 1960s, one of Wood’s research mentors had sampled shore crabs here. At the time, the area was very industrial and heavily polluted. But when researchers, including Wood, came back to collect samples half a century later, the beach had transformed. The water was cleaner and the shorebirds had returned, but those weren’t the only promising signs: The crabs were now full of trematode worms, a type of parasite that jumps between crabs and birds.

The parasites were a sign that the local shorebirds were doing great, Wood explained. 

As scientists have learned more about parasites, some have argued that many ecosystems might actually need them in order to thrive. “Parasites are a bellwether,” she said. “So if the parasites are there, you know that the rest of the hosts are there as well. And in that way they signal about the health of the ecosystem.”

To understand this counterintuitive idea, it’s helpful to look at another class of animals that people used to hate: predators. 

For years, many communities used to treat predators as a kind of vermin. Hunters were encouraged to kill wolves, bears, coyotes, and cougars in order to protect themselves and their property. But eventually, people started noticing some major consequences. And nowhere was this phenomenon more apparent than in Yellowstone National Park.

In the 1920s, gray wolves were systematically eradicated from Yellowstone. But once the wolf population had been eliminated from the park, the number of elk began to grow unchecked. Eventually, herds were overgrazing near streams and rivers, driving away animals including native beavers. Without beavers to build dams, ponds disappeared and the water table dropped. Before long, the entire landscape had changed.

In the 1990s, Yellowstone changed its policy and reintroduced gray wolves into the park. “When those wolves came back in, it was like a wave of green rolled over Yellowstone,” Wood said. This story became one of the defining parables in ecology: Predators weren’t just killers. They were actually holding entire ecosystems together.

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“I think there’s a lot of parallels between predator ecology and parasite ecology,” Wood said.

Like the gray wolves in Yellowstone, scientists are just starting to recognize the profound ways that ecosystems are shaped by parasites.

Take, for example, the relationship between nematomorphs, a type of parasitic worm, and creek water quality. The worms are born in the water, but spend their lives on land inside of bugs, like crickets or spiders.

At the end of their lives, nematomorphs need to move back to the water to mate. Instead of making the dangerous journey themselves, they trick their infected hosts into giving them a ride by inducing a “water drive,” an impulse on the part of its insect host to immerse itself in water. The insect will move to the edge of the water, consider it for a little while and then jump in — to its own death, but to this parasite’s benefit.

The story doesn’t end there. In a way, the entire creek ecosystem relies on a worm trying to hitch a ride to the water. Fish eat the bugs that throw themselves in the water. In fact, one species of endangered trout gets 60 percent of its diet exclusively from these infected bugs. “So essentially, the parasite is feeding this endangered trout population,” Wood said.

With less of the threat associated with hungry fish, the native insects in the stream can thrive, eating more algae and thereby giving the creek clear water.

Parasites make up an estimated 40 percent of the animal kingdom. Yet, scientists know next to nothing about millions of parasite species around the world. The main parasites that scientists have spent a lot of time studying are the ones that infect farm animals, pets, and people. 

Many of these alarming parasites, like ticks or the parasitic fungus that causes Valley Fever, are expected to increase due to climate change. But no one actually knows what climate change means for parasites, broadly — or how any big change in parasites might reshape the world. “There’s this general sense that infection is on the rise, that parasites and other infectious organisms are more common than they used to be,” Wood said. “At least for wildlife parasites, there really isn’t long-term data to tell us whether that impression that we have is real,” Wood said. “We had to invent a way to get those data,” Wood said.

Wood had an unconventional idea of where to look: a collection of preserved fishes locked away in a museum basement.

The University of Washington Fish Collections is home to more than 12 million samples of preserved fishes, dating all the way back to the 1800s. But the thousands of jars lining the collection shelves also contain something else: all the parasites living inside the fish samples. 

“So much has been discovered from museum specimens that we tucked away at one time, and then pulled off the shelf 100 years later,” said Wood. “It’s really remarkable to get to peer back in time the way that you do when you open up a fish from a hundred years ago. It’s the only way that we’ll know anything about what the oceans were like, parasitologically, that long ago.”

Wood and her team spent over two years opening up jars and surgically dissecting the parasites from within. Under microscopes, they identified and counted the parasites before returning everything for future study. In the end, they found more than 17,000 parasites.

Looking at the number of parasites found in fishes over time, the researchers found a mix of winners and losers, but there was one big class of parasites that was unequivocally declining: complex parasites, the kinds that need several different host species in order to survive. That type of parasite declined an average of 10 percent each decade, the team found.

In Wood’s investigation, there was only one factor that perfectly explained the decline in parasites: It wasn’t chemicals or overfishing. It was climate change. It made a lot of sense: Complex parasites can only survive if everyone one of those host species are around. If just one type of host goes missing? “Game over. That’s it for that parasite,” Wood said. “That’s why we think that these complex life cycle parasites are so vulnerable: because things are shifting, and the more points of failure you have, the likelier you are to fail.”

Wood said that, before this study, researchers had no idea climate change was wiping out this important class of parasites.

“It’s likely a collateral impact,” she said. “We don’t even have a handle on how many parasites there are in the world, much less the scale of parasite biodiversity loss right now. But the early indications are that parasites are at least as vulnerable as their hosts, and potentially more vulnerable.”

Wood says that it’s important for people to understand that parasites play huge and complex roles in nature, and if we ignore what we can’t see, we risk missing out on understanding how the world really works. “We all have a reflexive distaste for parasites, right? We take drugs, we apply chemicals, we spray, Wood said. “Our argument is that parasites are just species. They’re part of biodiversity, and they’re doing really important things in ecosystems that we depend upon them for.”

This story was originally published by Grist with the headline Nature can’t run without parasites. What happens when they start to disappear? on May 7, 2024.

Long known to be the peaceful close relative of humans, scientists have discovered that the endangered bonobo is more complicated than previously believed.

A new study has observed male bonobos acting aggressive more often than male chimpanzees within their own communities. The researchers also found that more aggressive males of both species had more mating opportunities.

“Chimpanzees and bonobos use aggression in different ways for specific reasons,” said lead author of the study Maud Mouginot, a Boston University anthropologist, in a news release from Cell Press. “The idea is not to invalidate the image of bonobos being peaceful — the idea is that there is a lot more complexity in both species.”

Earlier studies had looked at aggression in both bonobos and chimpanzees, but this was the first to use the same methods of comparison for the two species’ behavior in the field.

“I think earlier studies did not really try to quantitatively compare the two species. There are papers on chimpanzee’s aggression, and few on bonobo’s aggression, but the methods used do not allow us to directly compare those studies (they have different methods or it is too unclear),” Mouginot told EcoWatch in an email. “Only one study did this (Surbeck et al. 2017), however, they used different methods [in] the field. For the chimpanzees they used group follow (e.g., following a group the entire day) and all day focal follow (e.g., following one individual and recording all their behaviors), for bonobos they used group follow and 10-min focal follow. Because those methods were different, we decided to use data that used the same method on the two species (all day male focal follow).”

The study, “Differences in expression of male aggression between wild bonobos and chimpanzees,” was published in the journal Current Biology.

The research team examined male aggression rates in three communities of bonobos at Democratic Republic of Congo’s Kokolopori Bonobo Reserve, as well as two communities of chimpanzees at Tanzania’s Gombe National Park.

The team looked at a dozen bonobos and 14 chimpanzees, tracking one individual at a time for a whole day, noting the frequency of their aggressive interactions, who they were with and if they engaged in physical contact such as pushing and biting or chasing their adversary.

“You go to their nests and wait for them to wake up and then you just follow them the entire day — from the moment they wake up to the moment they go to sleep at night — and record everything they do,” Mouginot said in the press release.

Overall, the researchers found male bonobos to be aggressive more often than chimpanzees, engaging in three times more physical aggressions and 2.8 times as many aggressive interactions.

Male bonobos were almost only aggressive toward other males, while chimpanzees were apt to be aggressive toward females. Aggression by chimpanzees was more likely to involve male “coalitions” — 13.2 percent compared with one percent of bonobo aggressions.

“Male chimpanzees form coalitions for within group fights but especially for territory defense (which include border patrols or sometimes, killing raids). When one male fights another male from his group, he is taking the risk of losing an important coalitionary partner which would have helped for territory defense. Therefore, this might affect their ability to efficiently defend their group against other groups,” Mouginot told EcoWatch.

The researchers believe coalitions may be one of the reasons aggression is not as frequent among chimpanzees. When groups of males fight, there is the potential for more injuries. And if the fighting is within their own community, it could weaken the ability of the group to fend off other groups.

This isn’t an issue for bonobos since most of their altercations are one-on-one. They are also not believed to be territorial and have never been known to kill one another.

More aggressive males of both species had greater mating success.

“Male bonobos that are more aggressive obtain more copulations with females, which is something that we would not expect,” Mouginot said in the press release. “It means that females do not necessarily go for nicer males.”

This was surprising for the researchers to see within bonobo communities, since they have a social dynamic where females frequently outrank males.

“I don’t think females are specifically attracted to more aggressive males. First, by acting aggressively against other males, more aggressive males may manage to push away other males and then spend more time with females. Second, males are aggressive toward other males but avoid acting aggressively against females. One study (Surbeck et al. 2012) shows that more aggressive males spend more time affiliating with females,” Mouginot told EcoWatch.

In the future, the research team would like to compare the aggressive behavior of other groups of bonobos and chimpanzees to see if that behavior varies between subspecies and communities.

“I’d love to have the study complemented with comparable data from other field sites so we can get a broader understanding of variation within and between species,” Mouginot said in the press release.

Bonobos are listed on the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) Red List of Threatened Species as endangered. They are only found in forests located below the Congo River in the Democratic Republic of Congo.

Despite their threatened status, Mouginot said there are things people can do to help these rare primates from disappearing altogether.

“People can help by learning about bonobos, spreading their knowledge and sharing the critical situation in which bonobos are. They can also follow local or international associations such as BCI (Bonobo Conservative Initiative). They can make donations to those associations or to research centers to help pursue research which helps to maintain reserves and protect the bonobos too,” Mouginot told EcoWatch.

Bonobos are threatened by illegal hunting, agriculture and development, but Mouginot remains optimistic.

“The future of bonobos is very uncertain. They are endemic to one country (the Democratic Republic of Congo), which makes our ability to save them harder. They are losing their territory over farming and villages, they are also victims of poaching. The IUCN estimates that there are only 15,000 bonobos left, however, they are so remote in the rainforest that it is hard to get an exact count. Nevertheless, I don’t think we should lose hope,” Mouginot said. “Reserves, such as the Kokolopori Bonobo Reserve and many others, help to protect the species. Research also helps by improving our understanding of bonobos and by helping building reserves.”

The post Peaceful Bonobos and Aggressive Chimps? New Research Says It’s More Complicated Than That appeared first on EcoWatch.

The United Kingdom installed nearly 6,000 new public electric vehicle (EV) chargers in the first three months of this year — a record number — in the race to accommodate the influx of battery-powered cars.

The quarterly figures were provided by Bristol-based data company ZapMap and published by the UK’s Department for Transport.

“I think there is a coming together of two things,” said Ben Nelmes, chief executive of EV thinktank New AutoMotive, as The Guardian reported. “Some of the barriers have been mitigated. And the private sector has woken up to the opportunity.”

Nelmes pointed out that local councils had gradually been taking advantage of charger installation grants provided by the central government.

Roughly 1,500 of the new installations were rapid chargers, which can charge a car in under an hour.

At the end of April, the UK had 61,232 EV charging points at 32,697 charging stations, ZapMap said. That’s a 45 percent increase in total chargers since April of last year.

Nelmes said the recent expansion of charging infrastructure in the UK had brought public charging stations to areas that had been historically underserved, reported Electrek.

Higher interest rates have affected the sales of some major EV companies like Tesla and BYD in China, The Guardian reported.

The share of total car sales in the UK that are EVs has plateaued at 15.5 percent in 2024, following earlier fast growth.

Some people who are in the market for a new car have expressed concern about EV range or lack of adequate charging stations. The UK is addressing the issue by increasing the number of chargers, especially in areas where demand is high.

In a survey conducted by the Electric Vehicle Association last year, just six percent of England’s EV owners said they had range anxiety fairly or very often. Occasional, rare or a complete lack of range anxiety was reported by 94 percent of those taking the survey.

More than half of London’s 15,000 black cabs are hybrid-electric with range-extending internal combustion engines, reported Electrek. Most of the city’s biggest minicab and taxi services have committed to using fleets that are fully electric by next year.

The amount of charging stations and individual chargers varies greatly by region in the UK. London is the best place to own an EV for the number of chargers, with 221 per 100,000 people. Off-street parking can be hard to come by in the capital city of approximately nine million, so EV owners must rely on public charging stations.

Northeast England is the fastest growing region for the number of chargers per person, with the southwest part of the country in second place. Northern Ireland had the least number of chargers in the UK with just 29 for every 100,000 people.

The post UK Installs Nearly 6,000 Public EV Chargers in First 3 Months of 2024 appeared first on EcoWatch.

Florida Governor Ron DeSantis has announced a ban on the selling and distribution of lab-grown meat in the state, the first law of its kind in the United States.

With the ban, DeSantis said he would be saving beef from the “global elite,” reported BBC News.

“Today, Florida is fighting back against the global elite’s plan to force the world to eat meat grown in a petri dish or bugs to achieve their authoritarian goals,” DeSantis said in a press release from the State of Florida. “Our administration will continue to focus on investing in our local farmers and ranchers, and we will save our beef.”

The press release said the state was “taking action” in response to what it referred to as a goal by the World Economic Forum to force people to eat cultivated meat and insects.

“While the World Economic Forum is telling the world to forgo meat consumption, Florida is increasing meat production, and encouraging residents to continue to consume and enjoy 100% real Florida beef,” the press release said.

Arizona, Alabama and Tennessee are looking at similar initiatives, BBC News reported. The U.S. first approved lab-grown meat in 2022.

Eating meat grown in a lab in place of traditional meat has been shown to have the potential to reduce carbon emissions, make more land available for nature and decrease water use.

According to the World Economic Forum, cultivated meat can serve as a more environmentally-friendly and efficient source of food for an expanding global population.

Lindsay Cross, a Florida State Representative of the Democratic Party, referred to the ban as “anti-business and contrary to how we’ve tried to market Florida as a place of free enterprise. We should have more choices for our consumers,” reported The New York Times.

Cultivating meat involves removing cells from live animals and feeding them proteins, salt, fats, sugars, amino acids, vitamins and minerals and allowing them to multiply in large tanks. The meat product produced can then be made into standard shapes, like sausages and patties.

Wilton Simpson, Florida’s agriculture commissioner, said in the press release that the ban was necessary to protect “the integrity of American agriculture” and called cultivated meat “a disgraceful attempt to undermine our proud traditions and prosperity.”

The edible insects lobby has asked the U.S. Food and Drug Administration to include insect products like mealworms and protein powder made from crickets in its safe ingredients database, BBC News reported.

DeSantis said with the new law he was “fighting against an ideology that ultimately wants to eliminate meat production in the US and around the globe.”

Cultivated meat company Good Meat said in a post on X that it was “disappointed” by Florida’s new regulations.

“In a state that purportedly prides itself on being a land of freedom and individual liberty, its government is now telling consumers what meat they can or cannot purchase,” wrote Good Meat, as reported by The Hill. “The law is a setback for everyone: Floridians who deserve the right to eat whatever safe and approved meat they want; Florida’s technology sector, innovators and entrepreneurs; and all those working to stop the worst impacts of climate change.”

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The post Florida’s DeSantis Bans Lab-Grown Meat appeared first on EcoWatch.

The range of venomous snakes could look a lot different globally by 2070, according to a new study. Climate change is leading to habitat loss, which is likely to push venomous snakes into new regions.

An international research team, led by professor Pablo Ariel Martinez of the Federal University of Sergipe, studied data on 209 venomous snake species from around the world. The ranges of some venomous snake species could double by 2070, according to the study, which was published in the journal Lancet Planetary Health.

“Climate change is expected to have profound effects over the years. We are talking about consequences such as the loss of biodiversity and changes in the poisoning patterns of humans and domestic animals,” Martinez said in a statement.

The west African gaboon viper (Bitis rhinoceros) could see a 251% increase in habitable range by 2070, followed by a 136% potential increase for asp vipers (Vipera aspis) and a 118% potential increase for horned vipers (Vipera ammodytes).

However, not all venomous species will see an increase in range. Several species — including green bush vipers (Atheris squamigera), rock vipers (Montivipera xanthina), hognosed pit vipers (Porthidium nasutum), and pygmy copperheads (Austrelaps labialis) — are expected to lose more than 70% of their potential range, which would also affect the snakes’ native ecosystems.

In addition to analyzing the future distribution of different venomous snakes, the researchers reviewed which countries are likely to see an influx of venomous snakes as well as what areas of the world will be more vulnerable to venomous snake bites.

According to the findings, countries including Niger, Namibia, China, Nepal and Myanmar may see a rise in the number of venomous snake species in their countries, as the snakes may migrate from neighboring countries. But the greatest losses of venomous snake species and their habitats are likely to occur in South America and southern Africa.

The researchers also predicted that southeast Asia and Africa — especially Uganda, Kenya, Bangladesh, India and Thailand — may become the most vulnerable to increased conflicts between humans and the snakes. That’s because these regions, which can be important for agriculture, could also become more suitable for snake habitats amid climate change. In particular, flooding events can push snakes closer to human communities as they seek dry places, and this can increase risk of snake bites.

“As more land is converted for agriculture and livestock rearing, it destroys and fragments the natural habitats that snakes rely on,” Martinez and co-author Talita Ferreira Amado, of the German Centre for Integrative Biodiversity Research, told The Guardian. “However, some generalist snake species, especially those of medical concern, can adapt to agricultural landscapes and even thrive in certain crop fields or livestock areas that provide food sources like rodents.”

The study authors stressed that climate change is leading to increased habitat loss for these snakes, and the results threaten snakes, ecosystems and public health.

“Our research shows that when venomous snakes start showing up in new places, it’s a wake-up call for us to start thinking about how we can keep ourselves and our environment safe,” the study authors said, as reported by The Guardian.

The post Climate Change Could Lead to Major Venomous Snake Migrations, Study Says appeared first on EcoWatch.

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Earlier this year, Arizona lawmakers sued the Biden administration over the newly created Baaj Nwaavjo I’tah Kukveni — Ancestral Footprints of the Grand Canyon National Monument — arguing that the establishment of national monuments should be state matters and calling the move a “land grab.” Now, the Hopi, Havasupai, and Navajo Nation, whose ancestral lands overlap with the national monument, have intervened in the case and joined with the federal government to protect the area.

“Even if the Tribal Nations and federal government share similar goals and legal positions in this litigation, the United States cannot adequately represent the Tribal Nations’ sovereign interest,” the tribes’ intervention stated. 

The nearly one-million acre national monument protects areas tribes called home before being forcibly removed by the federal government, as well as places where tribal citizens hunt, pray, and gather foods and medicines. The area is also important for wildlife migration routes and potential burial sites. 

If successful, Arizona’s lawsuit would open Baaj Nwaavjo I’tah Kukveni to more economic development, and specifically, livestock grazing and uranium mining. Currently, there is only one uranium mine in operation within the boundaries of the national monument. The lawsuit argues that limiting mining of uranium around the Grand Canyon will make the U.S. more dependent on acquiring it from foreign countries for energy purposes.

Arizona’s lawsuit is focused specifically on the Antiquities Act. Passed in 1906 to protect areas of scientific and historical significance, President Biden used the act to create Baaj Nwaavjo I’tah Kukveni after decades of Indigenous advocacy focused on protecting the Grand Canyon from uranium mining. According to Arizona, the national monument ties up too much land, impacting revenue generation that could affect funding for schools as well as the economies of small towns in the area who have also joined in the suit against the federal government.

“Under the constitution, Congress is the policy making branch of government that decides how federal land is used,” Kim Quintero, a spokesperson for the Arizona Legislature. “Not presidential edicts.” 

“When you think about Baaj Nwaanjo I’tah Kukveni and the creation of this monument, it’s an immensely important place for the tribal nations,” said Mathew Campbell, a member of the Native Village of Gambell in Alaska, and legal counsel for the Havasupai Tribe and the Hopi Tribe. “The tribes fought very hard for the establishment of the monument and are here to defend it.”

Last year, a federal judge in Utah dismissed a similar lawsuit filed by states challenging the Bears Ears and Grand Staircase Escalante—two national monuments recently-created through the Antiquities Act with strong tribal ties. In that case, District Judge David Nuffer held that the Antiquities Act gives the president authority to create monuments and that the courts have no power to dispute it. That case is now in appeal. 

But Kim Quintero of the Arizona Legislature says their case is different. She cites a 2021 lawsuit where a group of commercial fishermen challenged President Obama’s use of the Antiquities Act that protected around five-thousand miles of ocean floor off the coast of New England, and put a ban on fishing. 

While the Supreme Court declined to review the case, Chief Justice John Roberts indicated interest in looking at the size of monuments writing that “the scope of the objects that can be designed under the Act, and how it measures the area necessary for their proper care and management, may warrant consideration– especially given the myriad restrictions on public use this purely discretionary designation can serve to justify.”

Quintero says the Arizona Legislature is banking on the Supreme Court taking the case. If successful, she said there will be other avenues for tribes to utilize in protecting the area.

“Tribal members, like other members of the public, can petition Congress to pass laws to protect areas of federal land they believe should be protected,” said Quintero.

Nine conservation organizations including the Grand Canyon Trust, Center for Biological Diversity, and Sierra Club have signed on to protect Baaj Nwaavjo I’tah Kukveni. “The conservation groups are very much following the lead of the tribes,” said Michal Toll, staff attorney for the Grand Canyon Trust. “These are their ancestral homelands.”

Mathew Campbell said it will likely take months before the intervention is ruled on by the court and years before the lawsuit is settled. 

This story was originally published by Grist with the headline Arizona wants to mine uranium near the Grand Canyon. Tribal nations are fighting back. on May 6, 2024.

This story was originally published by Inside Climate News and is reproduced here as part of the Climate Desk collaboration.

Within a thicket of the Big Cypress National Preserve, established a half-century ago to protect the marshes and sloughs here that make up a vital part of the Florida Everglades, a series of wells extracts oil from more than two miles underground.

The oil field is situated deep within a pine forest of the preserve — the first in the country — which channels more than 40 percent of the water flowing into Everglades National Park and shelters iconic and imperiled species like the fabled ghost orchid and Florida panther, the official state animal. The wells penetrate thousands of feet beneath an underground aquifer, an important drinking water source, and draw up oil from the so-called Sunniland trend, a reserve stretching across southwest Florida from Miami to Fort Myers, although most of the reserve is situated beneath Big Cypress.

For decades, oil production has endured in this corner of the fragile Everglades, a watershed that spans much of the peninsula and is the focus of a $21 billion federal and state restoration effort, one of the most ambitious in human history. Big Cypress is among some 10 percent of federally protected lands nationwide where the government owns the surface terrain while private entities retain the mineral rights underneath.

“Big Cypress National Preserve is very sacred to us,” said Talbert Cypress, elected chairman of the Miccosukee Tribe of Indians of Florida, a federally recognized tribal nation located in the Everglades. “We have a lot of ceremonial grounds that have been in Big Cypress National Preserve, burial grounds, places where we gather our traditional medicine. So just seeing that sort of damage in a place that really matters to us a lot, it’s sad to see it.”

Now the Miccosukee, longtime environmental stewards in Florida who notably helped steer stringent water quality standards for their sacred “river of grass,” have a plan for phasing out oil drilling within Big Cypress.  

The tribe has joined with WildLandscapes International, a nonprofit land conservation group, to engineer a multimillion-dollar deal with the Collier family, which owns the vast majority of the mineral rights beneath the preserve. If the agreement is finalized, the family would give up the mineral rights associated with some 465,000 acres to the federal government.

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“Unfortunately I cannot share. It’s under a non-disclosure,” said David Houghton, director of WildLandscapes International, when asked about the details. “The deal includes all the lands that the Colliers own the mineral rights on, minus what they currently have under lease.”

The proposal comes amid interest in expanding oil exploration and development within Big Cypress, even as rising global temperatures associated with fossil fuel emissions represent yet another threat to the Everglades, a watershed responsible for the drinking water of some 9 million Floridians. Most recently a Texas oil and gas company submitted a permit application to the National Park Service for two new sites within the preserve.

“We think we’ve got a deal here. We don’t know that, but we think,” Houghton said. “We’ll get a number, and that number either will work or it won’t — and I think it will.” 

Liquid tar

The Everglades are Florida’s most important freshwater resource. The watershed spans central and south Florida, encompassing the Kissimmee River, Lake Okeechobee, sawgrass prairies to the south, and Florida Bay. It includes several federal- and state-protected lands including the Everglades Headwaters National Wildlife Refuge, Florida Panther National Wildlife Refuge, Big Cypress National Preserve, and Everglades National Park. Various efforts over the last century to drain the Everglades, the largest steered by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, have made modern Florida possible and left the river of grass drastically altered. 

The Humble Oil and Refining Company, a predecessor of Exxon Mobil, discovered oil in Southwest Florida in 1943, after the governor and cabinet at the time offered a $50,000 reward to those who first found oil in the state.

Today, Florida is responsible for less than 0.04 percent of the nation’s oil production, according to a report the Conservation Economics Institute, a nonprofit research organization, prepared for the Natural Resources Defense Council. The industry employs fewer than a thousand members of the state’s workforce and accounts for $25.4 million or 0.0002 percent of its gross domestic product. A separate study by the American Petroleum Institute concluded the oil and natural gas industry contributes nearly $22.1 billion to the Florida economy and supports nearly 266,800 jobs.

The vast majority of the state’s oil production occurs in the Panhandle, according to the Conservation Economics report. The two oil fields within Big Cypress, Bear Island and Raccoon Point, together were responsible for 585 barrels a day in 2020, about one-seventh of the state’s daily total. Oil was discovered at Bear Island, which is located partially within the preserve, in 1972, before the preserve was established, and production began a year later. At Raccoon Point, southeast of Bear Island, oil was detected in 1978. Production began in 1981, and the field was expanded in 1992.

Big Cypress was established in 1974. Two years later, the Collier family, for whom Collier County, where a large portion of the preserve is situated, is named, conveyed 76,790 acres to the National Park Service to help create the preserve, with the family maintaining the underground mineral rights. The Colliers can trace their family tree to the early 20th century advertising magnate Barron Gift Collier, at the time the largest landowner in Florida. In 1996, the family conveyed an additional 83,000 acres to the National Park Service to expand Big Cypress. Today, Big Cypress encompasses more than 700,000 acres, including much of the western Everglades.

In 2003, the federal government agreed to purchase the Colliers’ mineral rights for $120 million, but the purchase fell through. At the time, various appraisals valued their mineral rights beneath Big Cypress, the Florida Panther National Wildlife Refuge, and Ten Thousand Islands National Wildlife Refuge at between $5 million and $475 million.

The oil here is of the heavy-sour variety, with a consistency of liquid tar, according to a website of the Collier Resources Company, which manages the family’s mineral holdings. When refined, the oil is used in auto, aviation and diesel fuels, lube oils, and asphalt. Edward Glab, director of the Global Energy Security Forum in the School of International and Public Affairs at Florida International University, characterized the oil as not high-grade or worth a lot of money. Multiple phone calls to the Collier Resources Company were not returned.

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“To me it makes no sense drilling for oil anywhere in the Everglades,” Glab said. “It just doesn’t because the reserves are simply not going to be there to justify that sort of investment.”

“It’s a lot of trouble for something that’s not producing a ton of oil, and it’s not like premium-grade oil. It’s like machinery oil, the kind used for heavy machinery,” said Cypress, chairman of the Miccosukee Tribe of Indians of Florida. “For us, when we see the amount of work that goes into the extraction, the damage that they do, it doesn’t seem worth it.”

Acidizing rather than fracking is more likely to be used in Florida to extract oil because of the state’s geology, which is characterized by porous limestone that harbors underground aquifers, according to the Conservation Economics report. Acidizing involves injecting the oil-bearing rock formations with a mixture of acid, water, and other chemicals, dissolving the formations and allowing the oil to flow more easily to the well. Some 93 percent of the state’s population depends on groundwater for drinking water, far more than any other state in the nation.  

Wastewater from such techniques can contain pollutants and threaten the groundwater, although the Collier family says multiple precautions are taken throughout the drilling process to protect the sensitive environment here, according to the Collier Resources Company website. For instance, to safeguard the aquifers, a series of steel casings and thick layer of cement surround all oil-producing wells. At the well sites a limestone pad is constructed with a berm around it to prevent stormwater runoff from carrying pollutants into the environment. The pads also include a liner to protect the groundwater. The Collier family website also says water sampling has revealed no evidence of groundwater contamination.

But spills have occurred. A spill at Raccoon Point in October 2018, caused by corrosion in a production well, released 2,000 gallons of wastewater mixed with oil. The operator at the time, under lease with the Collier family, said the fluids stayed within a bermed area, and most of the fluids were recovered, according to a Florida Department of Environmental Protection report.

“There’s just so many potential damages that can happen here, and when it’s such a small amount of oil that’s being produced it does not make economic sense,” said Evan E. Hjerpe, executive director of the Conservation Economics Institute and author of the report. “It’s kind of an antiquated or artifact of previous times, and it would benefit the public much greater to move forward without having these potential risks going on.”

“The reason we survived”

For hundreds of years, the Miccosukee people hunted, fished, and held religious ceremonies among the soaring cypress swamps and sweeping sawgrass prairies of Big Cypress. During the First and Second Seminole Wars, in the first half of the 19th century, they were pushed deep within the watery wilderness and found sanctuary on the tree islands scattered here.

“We have a mother-child relationship with the Everglades because it helped us survive the removal era as well as the termination era, and so without it we would not exist as a sovereign entity. We would have either been annihilated or removed to the West,” said Curtis Osceola, chief of staff for the Miccosukee Tribe of Indians of Florida. “Our land is the reason we survived. It is the reason why we’re here, and so we have a duty to the land that once protected us. And so that’s what it is to be Miccosukee, is to serve and protect the lands of our environment.”

Today, most of the 600-member tribe lives on tribal lands within Everglades National Park, although some 100 to 200 Miccosukees, members of the Seminole Tribe of Florida, and other Native people of Miccosukee and Seminole heritage live in 15 villages within Big Cypress. About eight of the communities, as well as a school, are situated downstream from Raccoon Point, raising concerns that spilled oil could flow in their direction, affecting surface water and the underground aquifer, which some residents have tapped with residential wells. Osceola said back when Big Cypress was established and the Collier family maintained the underground mineral rights, the Miccosukees were left out of the negotiations.

“Part of our culture tells us that the land should rest, and those fluids beneath the land should go undisturbed. That includes natural gas, oil, things like that,” he said. “So the extraction of oil is a very unnatural act.”

Oil drilling within Big Cypress is the latest environmental issue the tribe has taken up. After the federal government sued the state in the 1980s over water pollution in Everglades National Park and the Arthur R. Marshall Loxahatchee National Wildlife Refuge, the Miccosukees got involved in the issue as defenders of the river of grass. The litigation led to a monumental state cleanup effort, which remains in progress today.

The tribe’s pending deal with the Colliers would halt all future drilling within Big Cypress, although existing production could continue at least for now. The agreement likely would upend a plan for two new sites in Big Cypress that Burnett Oil Co. Inc., an oil and gas company based in Fort Worth, Texas, is pursuing.

In 2017 and 2018, Burnett, under a lease with the Collier family, conducted an off-road seismic survey of 110 square miles of Big Cypress. The survey involved applying vibrating plates to the ground and sending seismic signals deep beneath the surface to map potential oil. To access the remote area, 33-ton vibroseis trucks were used. The hefty vehicles sank into the soft, water-soaked soils, leaving deep ruts, consequential in an ecosystem where the boundary between land and water is blurred and inches of elevation can mean vast differences in habitat. The effort also harmed slow-growing mature dwarf cypress trees. As many as 500 of the trees were cut down to allow the trucks to move through the area, according to a 2023 report by the National Parks Conservation Association.

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Six years later the landscape has not recovered, the report said. The survey left lasting scars including soil compaction and deep twisting furrows, and almost none of the felled cypress trees has shown signs of regrowth. The National Parks Conservation Association wants the National Park Service to compel Burnett to replant the trees and address the other problems. Burnett did not respond to multiple requests for comment.

The two new sites Burnett is proposing would be similar to the one at Raccoon Point, according to the company’s permit application to the National Park Service. The document says the project is designed to minimize environmental impacts and avoid historical, cultural, and archeological resources, including Miccosukee and Seminole areas.

If the National Park Service were to approve Burnett’s plan, that would contradict the Biden administration’s demonstrated commitment to confront climate change, said Christina Reichert, senior attorney in the Florida office of Earthjustice, a nonprofit litigating environmental issues.

“It doesn’t match up to the promises that we’re hearing and the focus that this administration should be having on fighting the climate crisis. This would be creating brand new fossil fuel infrastructure in a time where we need to be transitioning away from that,” she said. “Wetlands are carbon sinks. One of the things they do is absorb carbon from the atmosphere and store it. So it doesn’t make sense to destroy wetlands and then build fossil fuel infrastructure.”

Hjerpe of the Conservation Economics Institute said closing an oil well can be difficult and costly, sometimes making it more advantageous to continue operating the well even when the oil is not of the highest quality. He said it is possible Burnett’s lease agreement with the Collier family mandated exploration plans or focused on increasing new development.

“When you see the path forward, and there’s certainly potential for a buy-out of your minerals and buy-out of your operations, then it completely makes financial sense to make sure that you are heavily invested in the area and that you keep producing and illustrating the value and increasing the value of your operations,” he said.

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Next steps

Climate change associated with fossil fuel emissions is poised to have a big impact on the Everglades. Rising temperatures will increase evaporation, stressing the watershed that already is pressured by explosive population growth and development. The hotter temperatures also will lead to precipitation changes, raising concerns about whether the water management infrastructure here, some of the most complex in the world, is up to future challenges.

The agreement involving the Miccosukees, Colliers, and WildLandscapes International includes three phases. Under the first phase, completed last year, the Collier family sold 11,141 acres, including the mineral rights, to the Florida Department of Environmental Protection and South Florida Water Management District. The second phase, focused on the mineral rights beneath Big Cypress, still faces several steps, said Houghton of WildLandscapes International.

“The way the deal is set up we have a floor value, and if the appraisal meets that or above then the Colliers are obligated to sell,” he said. “If the appraisal is below, the Colliers could get out.”

If the agreement moves forward, Congress would appropriate the funding, which could take a few more years. The money would come from the Land and Water Conservation Fund, a federal program that puts earnings from offshore oil and gas leasing toward land conservation. The third phase involves land near Everglades City, a small town outside of Big Cypress.

Cypress, chairman of the Miccosukee Tribe of Indians of Florida, said future plans go further. Eventually the tribe wants to stop all oil drilling within Big Cypress for good.

“Florida is going to need more freshwater, more drinking water, and we don’t have that without the Everglades,” he said. “It matters to everybody in Florida.”

This story was originally published by Grist with the headline How the Miccosukee Tribe plans to stop oil drilling in the Everglades once and for all on May 5, 2024.