In 2023, Europe removed a record 487 dams and other river barriers, according to a new report by Dam Removal Europe (DRE), a coalition of organizations including The Nature Conservancy, Rewilding Europe, Wetlands International and World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF).
The number of removals from waterways in 15 European countries was 50 percent more than the year before, a press release from WWF said. More than 2,671.9 miles of rivers were reconnected through the initiatives, restoring ecosystems and boosting climate resilience and biodiversity.
“It is amazing to witness another record-breaking year for dam removals in European rivers. Almost 500 barriers were removed, highlighting the growing support for river restoration to enhance water security, reverse nature loss and adapt to the worsening impacts of climate change,” said Herman Wanningen, World Fish Migration Foundation director, in the press release. “From France to Finland, communities, companies and countries are investing in removing obsolete and increasingly risky barriers to improve river health for people and nature.”
France led the way with barrier removals last year, with the winner from the previous two years — Spain — coming in second, followed by Sweden and its neighbor, Denmark.
The European Union Nature Restoration Law includes the EU Biodiversity Strategy’s dam removal target of restoring a minimum of 15,534.3 miles of rivers by 2030. However, the legislation did not pass the Council of the European Union and remains in limbo.
“The handful of EU countries that are blocking the Nature Restoration Law are also jeopardising the recovery and protection of our rivers, which ultimately will adversely affect us,” said Claire Baffert, senior EU policy officer of water and climate change adaptation at WWF, in the press release. “Across Europe, rivers are littered with often obsolete dams that worsen the health of the very freshwater ecosystems that are vital to providing clean drinking water for us, water for farming and for biodiversity.”
The report, Dam Removal Progress 2023, warns of safety risks presented by obsolete river barriers. Rivers in Europe are broken up by 1.2 million-plus barriers, 150,000 of which are obsolete and pose substantial dangers to wildlife and people.
“Obsolete barriers do nothing but harm the river, increase nature loss and pose a growing risk since they were built to cope with very different climatic conditions. It’s time to re-think the way we manage our rivers by removing all obsolete barriers and letting as many rivers as possible flow freely. A river that does not flow freely is slowly dying,” Wanningen said in the press release.
DRE collected information regarding risks posed by dams to recreational river users like kayakers and swimmers. It discovered 82 incidents resulting in 129 deaths in 16 countries. The victims ranged in age from two to 59 years old — most were in their mid-20s and mid-30s.
“Low-head dams (i.e., weirs) that are especially dangerous due to the formation of an inescapably strong subsurface current (submerged hydraulic jump) are usually called ‘drowning machines,’” the report said. “These structures have caused hundreds of fatalities in the U.S. in the last 20 years; more than any other kind of riverine barrier.”
The risk of any dam collapsing — especially aging and obsolete barriers — is increased by the more extreme flooding and intense storms caused by climate change.
“With tens of thousands of obsolete dams scattered across Europe, the potential for catastrophic failures is a growing risk for downstream communities. Indeed, at least three river barriers collapsed last year due to heavy rain in Norway, Northern Ireland, and Slovenia,” the press release said.
With a number of dam removal projects scheduled for this year, as well as a European dam removal movement network of more than 6,000 people, momentum has been growing.
“Several significant barrier removal projects are on the horizon for the near future,” the press release said. “Croatia is set to proceed with the removal of eight barriers, including parts of old mills and remains of older infrastructure, in Plitvice during April and May, with the aim of restoring natural river flow and biodiversity. Romania is also gearing up for its first barrier removal scheduled for May, a move anticipated to enhance river connectivity and ecosystem health.”
DRE said it wants to make dam removal “business as usual” throughout Europe.
“The support offered by DRE empowered practitioners to restore the connectivity of thousands of river kilometers in the past years, thereby enhancing freshwater biodiversity and enabling migratory fish to access their historical spawning sites after centuries. This impactful outcome was achieved not only through the removal of physical river barriers but also through dedicated and persuasive efforts to influence decision-makers and communities,” the report said.
This story was produced by Grist and co-published with Verite News.
When a winter storm knocked out Texas’ power grid in 2021, the scale of the devastation it wrought was exacerbated by a singular fact about the Lone Star State: It has its own electric grid, an “energy island” that has long been uniquely isolated from the rest of the country, with just four transmission lines linking it to neighboring states. When the storm hit, Texas was unable to transfer enough emergency power from other electricity markets to keep the lights on. The death toll was in the hundreds.
A new multi-billion-dollar infrastructure project could mitigate a similar power emergency in the future. For more than a decade, a private renewables developer, Pattern Energy, has been trying to build a 320-mile transmission line linking Texas’ power grid to the Southeast. But the project, known as Southern Spirit, is now facing opposition in not one but two states it would traverse. Entergy, a utility company whose affiliates in Mississippi and Louisiana would stand to benefit if the new project fails, has raised doubts about the proposal before Mississippi regulators. And even if Mississippi moves forward, a bill in the Louisiana legislature — which was revised at the behest of Entergy — could derail the entire project.
It’s not just Texans who would benefit from more transmission. In order for the U.S. to decarbonize its electricity, a lot more power lines will need to be built across the country. Most crucial is the need for more interregional transmission lines like Southern Spirit — those that connect the nation’s patchwork of energy grids to one another. These are especially important for renewable energy, in part for geographic reasons: The sunny deserts of the Southwest and the gusty plains of Texas and Oklahoma are disproportionately strong producers of solar and wind power, respectively, but most of the potential customers for that power are clustered near the country’s coasts. As a result, the Department of Energy estimates that interregional transmission capacity will need to expand by a factor of five in order to meet the Biden administration’s goal of decarbonizing the power sector by 2035.
But at least two major hurdles stand in the way. The first is that transmission lines sometimes face resistance from landowners along the way, who use the permitting and environmental review processes to block development through litigation or similar means. A second, underappreciated obstacle to new interregional transmission lines is resistance from power companies, who may face a strong disincentive to allow competition in the form of cheap, faraway electricity. On a recent podcast appearance, Mark Lauby, chief engineer at the North American Electric Reliability Corporation, an industry group that regulates the national transmission grid, acknowledged this difficulty, asking, “How do I get a [transmission] line through multiple markets when markets themselves don’t want to compete with other markets?”
“We have substantial challenges within markets, within generators, that are trying to stop the building of transmission. It’s not just permitting; it’s also those folks that feel that they actually get gain out of having that stinking solar stuff a ways away, so they can make more money locally,” Lauby added.
Beyond helping make Texas’ grid resilient, more transmission lines connecting Texas to nearby grids would also help maximize the carbon emissions savings from the state’s abundant wind power. Texas produces more wind energy than any other state, but wind farms are often forced to reduce their output due to inadequate transmission. Building more transmission lines allows producers to produce more wind energy by giving it somewhere to go.
For these reasons, the Southern Spirit project looks like a win-win: If built, it could help decarbonize the region, lower power bills, and protect Texans from a repeat of 2021. It was this last benefit that seemed to finally put some wind in the project’s sails after the storm convinced grid planners at ERCOT, Texas’ energy grid, that more transmission was needed.
But clouds appeared on the horizon last October when Entergy Mississippi expressed concerns around the transmission project in filings before the Mississippi Public Service Commission, which must approve Southern Spirit for the project to move forward.
The proposed path for the Southern Spirit Transmission line, from Texas to Mississippi.
Courtesy of Pattern Energy
Neal Kirby, a spokesperson for the Entergy Corporation (the Mississippi utility’s parent company), told Grist in an email that Entergy Mississippi has not taken a position on Southern Spirit overall, but rather has “raised concerns about the impacts of the project on its customers.”
Kirby told Grist that the utility was concerned that “eastbound flows from the line would cause overloads on the system that Southern Spirit would not be required to address or resolve. As a result, Entergy Mississippi homes and businesses may be left with either less reliable electric service or footing the bill for system upgrades to reliably accommodate injections of energy from the new line.”
In other words, Entergy’s system might not be equipped to handle the extra power shipped in from Texas without capital upgrades — and because utilities pass on the costs of approved capital upgrades to consumers as a matter of course, this would mean higher electric bills.
Daniel Tait, a researcher at the Energy and Policy Institute, a nonprofit utility watchdog, called Entergy’s contention that access to Southern Spirit would destabilize the grid and make its energy more costly “absurd and a mask for its anti-competitive behavior.”
Just what might be “anti-competitive” about Entergy’s stance on Southern Spirit was captured in testimony submitted to the Mississippi Public Service Commission by Jeff Dicharry, a transmission planner employed by Entergy, who said the proposed transmission line could force the utility to scale back service at its natural gas plants in Mississippi.
“The predictable result would be an inability to operate [Entergy-operated natural gas plants] Choctaw and Attala during periods with east-bound flow on [Southern Spirit] due to congestion on the transmission system. This would be problematic,” wrote Dicharry.
Tait said Entergy Mississippi’s complaint amounts to “an implicit acknowledgment that this [transmission line] is economically beneficial for customers,” because the Mississippi utility would only reduce operations at its gas plants if the energy flowing in from Texas were cheaper than its own output.
In Louisiana, meanwhile, state legislators are considering a bill that would effectively kill the project by denying expropriation authority — the ability to acquire private property through eminent domain — to all transmission lines that run through the state unless a majority of their power is consumed within the state.
Alan Seabaugh, the bill’s Republican sponsor in the Louisiana state Senate, told Grist his bill was intended to protect North Louisiana landowners from their land being confiscated for a project that does not benefit the state’s residents. The bill passed the Senate by 36 to 1 on March 25 and is pending before the House’s Civil Law and Procedure Committee.
Because Southern Spirit connects Texas to Mississippi, “there is no way to legitimately with a straight face argue that Louisiana’s going to benefit from this one iota,” Seabaugh said, though he clarified that he has not taken a formal position for or against the project.
Adam Renz, Pattern Energy’s director of project development, told Grist that Seabaugh was “very much technically incorrect” in his assessment that Louisiana would not benefit from the transmission line. Though the line does terminate in Mississippi rather than Louisiana, it would deliver energy into a regional grid known as MISO South, which much of Louisiana draws power from.
“The electrons the project will inject into the system can and will flow into the state of Louisiana,” Renz said in an email.
Entergy’s Louisiana subsidiary has not taken a position on Seabaugh’s bill, but the utility was instrumental in the passage of an amendment that exempted any transmission lines within an existing power grid from its purview — effectively ensuring its own future projects would not be affected. “They gave us an amendment to make sure that they were excluded,” Seabaugh said.
Kirby, the Entergy spokesperson, confirmed this. “When the bill author shared the legislation with us, we raised concerns that it may impede projects deemed necessary by MISO or SPP, the entities that are ultimately responsible for making independent determinations about what transmission projects are needed in most of Louisiana,” he said. “Entergy Louisiana suggested to the bill author some language that would address this concern.”
To Davante Lewis, an elected utility regulator in Louisiana who wrote a letter to the state Senate opposing the bill, the amendment effectively “gives the incumbent utilities all the rights to build transmission” and amounts to “pushing interregional transmission costs onto ratepayers,” because utilities have the authority to pass on their capital costs to ratepayers once they get regulatory approval. By contrast, Pattern Energy is privately financing the Southern Spirit project with an investment of more than $2.6 billion, and will recoup that investment from tariffs on power sold over the line once it’s operational. Renz said the project has not received any federal or state incentives.
Lewis, whose commission is currently reviewing a petition for certification by Pattern Energy, has not taken a position on Southern Spirit but said he opposes Seabaugh’s bill because, while it “seems to be directly targeted only at the Southern Spirit transmission line, my concern is what would this mean for transmission buildout” — which he characterized as an important priority for Louisiana ratepayers in the face of growing electricity demand as well as the need to decarbonize.
“Bringing on transmission in order to curb peak demand is vitally important. However, if we look at who has been the biggest objector, it’s been utilities,” Lewis said.
In a series of 40 action-based initiatives, the European Union is investing $3.71 billion to advance oceansustainability and conservation in 2024, the bloc’s environment commissioner said.
The announcement was made at the Our Ocean Conference in Greece and is the largest pledge by the EU since the conference began a decade ago, a press release from the European Commission said.
“Mitigation and adaptation are not enough. We must also focus on protection and restoration to insulate land and seas from harmful human activity and to give space to nature to heal,” Prime Minister of Greece Kyriakos Mitsotakis said, as Reuters reported.
The goal of the Our Ocean Conference is to foster international support for sustainable development and marine conservation, the press release said. At this year’s conference, the EU is seeking to cover all the event’s themes: marine protected areas, marine pollution, sustainable fisheries and blue economies, ocean and climate change, maritime security and more.
The EU has committed as much as $2.02 billion for sustainable fisheries under the Recovery and Resilience Facility. These funds will be put toward efforts in Spain, Portugal, Greece, Cyprus and Poland for resilience and recovery plans to support reforms and investments in aquaculture and sustainable fisheries.
The bloc has also pledged $1.44 million to fund marine biodiversity in areas that are part of the Marine Biodiversity of Areas Beyond National Jurisdiction Agreement (BBNJ). Another $25.5 million will go toward the protection and conservation of marine ecosystems and biodiversity in the Maldives, the French Southern and Antarctic Lands and Southern Africa’s Blue Benguela Current.
Additional funding will be provided for ocean observation programs and the advancement of ocean models research for climate forecasts, as well as sustainable blue economies in places like Italy, Portugal, Mauritania, Western Africa, Mozambique, Angola and the Mediterranean region.
The EU is also pledging $98 million to help secure a sustainable blue economy and restore “our blue planet” through EU Mission: Restore our Ocean and Waters.
“The ocean and seas cover 71% of the Earth’s surface. The ocean is under pressure: it suffers from global warming, unsustainable practices, illegal fishing, pollution and the loss of marine habitats,” the press release said. “Originally launched in 2014, the Our Ocean Conference has since mobilised more than 2,160 commitments worth approximately $130 billion.”
“The ocean is part of who we are, and our shared responsibility,” said Virginijus Sinkevičius, EU Commissioner for Environment, Oceans and Fisheries, in the press release. “One year after the conclusion of the BBNJ Agreement, I am glad to reiterate, here in Greece, the EU’s ambition to continue acting as a driving force towards ocean sustainability.”
As ocean water heats up, swaths of once-technicolor coral reefs have begun turning white, putting ecosystems across the globe at risk.
Scientists from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and the International Coral Reef Initiative announced on Monday that the world is undergoing its fourth global coral bleaching event, marking the second such occurrence in the last decade. According to Derek Manzello, coordinator of NOAA’s Coral Reef Watch program, scientists have documented significant coral bleaching across every major ocean since early last year.
The current bleaching event, caused by long-lasting high ocean temperatures, has hit reefs in more than 53 countries and territories and 54 percent of all areas with reefs. Some places, such the Caribbean, Australia’s Great Barrier Reef, and large parts of the South Pacific, began documenting widespread bleaching in early 2023. Now, with recent reports from countries along the Indian Ocean and the South Atlantic confirming that none of the four major ocean basins have been left untouched, the event has been determined to be truly global, according to NOAA and the International Coral Reef Initiative.
“Unfortunately, we’re likely to see bleaching events continue to happen, and they’re likely to get worse,” Manzello said. Previous mass bleaching events happened in 1998, 2010, and between 2014 and 2017. According to Manzello, the current event is likely to engulf more reef areas than ever before.
In February, ocean temperatures hit a record high, and since last June, each month consecutive has been the warmest of that month ever recorded. Although a period of ocean cooling, known as La Niña, is expected to bring relief this summer, the amount of bleached coral reefs will increase by about 1 percent per week while high temperatures persist.
Bleaching occurs when corals become stressed by rising sea temperatures and expel the algae living within their tissues, causing them to turn white. Corals are invertebrate animals and rely on the algae as a symbiotic source of food. If temperatures remain high for too long, bleaching can lead to mass coral death. Even in well-protected areas, like Australia’s Great Barrier Reef, up to half of coral have been killed by warming temperatures.
Die-off of coral threatens not only the health of marine ecosystems, but also the livelihood and food security for people who depend on them. According to some estimates, economic activities that rely on healthy coral reefs are worth $11 trillion dollars every year.
The world’s oceans, which absorb 90 percent of heat trapped in the atmosphere by greenhouse gases, have experienced more frequent and more intense marine heatwaves over the past century. Last year’s first warning sign came from the southern tip of Florida, when an unprecedentedly severe and long-lasting heat wave caused hot tub-like temperatures and bleached corals. In response, NOAA took steps to save reefs, such as moving young corals to deeper, cooler water, and deploying shade to keep reefs out of the sun.
“This should be seen as a global warning,” Manzello said, adding that cutting back greenhouse gas emissions is an essential part of any solution. “Ocean health is being impacted drastically by climate change, but we still have time to get things right. We still have time to stop this trend.”
Studies have recently detected microplastics in human lungs and blood, and previous research shows humans ingest and inhale many microplastics even at home. In 2020, scientists uncovered microplastics in human organs for the first time. Now, researchers are making sense of how microplastics that are ingested can make their way from the gut to other organs.
Researchers studied mice that were exposed to and ingested microplastics over a four-week period and found those microplastics moved to organ tissues of the brain, liver and kidney. The team also noted metabolic differences in the colon, liver and brain after the microplastic exposure. The scientists published their findings in the journal Environmental Health Perspectives.
“We could detect microplastics in certain tissues after the exposure,” Eliseo Castillo, associate professor at the Department of Internal Medicine at University of New Mexico’s School of Medicine, said in a statement. “That tells us it can cross the intestinal barrier and infiltrate into other tissues.”
Microplastics are tiny fragments of plastics. Humans have produced over 7 billion metric tons of plastic since the 1950s and every year, we produce about 400 million metric tons of additional plastic waste. Most plastics become waste in landfills or the environment, but they don’t biodegrade. Instead, they crack and break down into small pieces. These tiny plastic fragments can be found in our drinking water or food sources, such as seafood. In homes, microplastic pollution can also be found in dust, so humans may also inhale plastics.
As reported by Reuters, scientists estimate that humans consume about 5 grams of microplastics per week, or about enough to fill a soup spoon. Estimates suggest humans consume about 21 grams of microplastics per month and 250 grams per year. Over a lifetime of about 79 years, humans may consume 20 kilograms of microplastics.
“These mice were exposed for four weeks. Now, think about how that equates to humans, if we’re exposed from birth to old age,” Castillo said. “Now imagine if someone has an underlying condition, and these changes occur, could microplastic exposure exacerbate an underlying condition?”
The scientists plan to further their research by examining whether different diets, such as a high-fat diet compared to a high-fiber diet, can impact microplastic exposure and ingestion. Aaron Romero, a Ph.D. student of Castillo’s, is also researching how and why microplastics change gut microorganisms to further determine how these plastic fragments could potentially affect health.
“Research continues to show the importance of gut health. If you don’t have a healthy gut, it affects the brain, it affects the liver and so many other tissues,” Castillo said. “So even imagining that the microplastics are doing something in the gut, that chronic exposure could lead to systemic effects.”
A new study led by scientists from the University of Exeter has found that the risk of seabed creatures being exposed to plastics depends on how they feed and interact with their environment, rather than simply reflecting pollution levels in their local area.
All ocean plastic ends up sinking to the seafloor, a richly biodiverse habitat. The marine species who live in this unique environment burrow into the sediment and process food in a variety of ways that determine their levels of plastic exposure, a press release from the University of Exeter said.
“We know very little about the global seafloor and the species living there, but the impact of plastic pollution is growing even in parts of the deep ocean never seen by humans,” said Dr. Adam Porter, postdoctoral research fellow with the University of Exeter’s Convex Seascape Survey — a five-year project that examines ocean carbon storage — in the press release.
The research team found that seabed creatures living in parts of the ocean with high plastic pollution levels — particularly the Mediterranean and Yellow Seas — had ingested the most plastics.
“The Mediterranean and Yellow Sea animals were the most contaminated in all the studies we looked in. The Mediterranean has repeatedly been identified as likely one of the most contaminated places on Earth given the population numbers surrounding it, its semi-enclosed nature (i.e. not much outflow relative to the N. Atlantic) and the number of rivers that run in also. The Yellow Sea samples are from an area highly polluted – again likely due to regional circulation patterns and proximity to the highly populated cities along the coasts of S.E. Asia,” Porter told EcoWatch in an email.
The highest plastic levels were found in Blue and Red Shrimp (Aristeus antennatus), who live in the northwestern parts of the Mediterranean, and another shrimp species, Crangon affinis, from China’s South Yellow Sea. Each of the Blue and Red Shrimp were found to have 164 microplastics, while individual Crangon affinis had ingested 294 microplastics.
In 93 percent of studies, microplastics were found in animals living on the seafloor.
“We know that species experience sub-lethal (stress/inflammation/false satiation (feeling full) etc.) and indeed lethal effects from ingesting plastic; but this must be caveated with the understanding that these experiments often use high concentrations in order to find the tipping point at which a particular type of plastic becomes lethal,” Porter told EcoWatch. “However, there are a huge number of studies that show that plastics cause internal abrasions, block gut passages, cause inflammation responses due to having plastic in their guts and generally cause harm. This coupled with all the other threats animals on the seafloor face may just be the straw that breaks the camel’s back.”
Many earlier studies had focused on mussels and other filter-feeding bivalves, the press release said.
“Contrary to previous thinking, it turns out that many filter feeders have fairly effective methods of releasing unwanted particles rather than ingesting them,” Porter said in the press release.
The researchers found that predators, seabed scavengers called deposit feeders — as opposed to filter feeders — and omnivores were the most likely to take plastic into their bodies. Especially susceptible were marine animals like crabs, as well as starfish, sea urchins, brittlestars, sea cucumbers and squid.
The study, “Microplastic burden in marine benthic invertebrates depends on species traits and feeding ecology within biogeographical provinces,” was published in the journal Nature Communications.
“Organisms living in the seabed, such as clams, worms and shrimps may not seem that important, but they are essential for regulating and recycling the planet’s resources and form the base of the food web,” said co-author of the study Jasmin Godbold, a marine ecology professor at the University of Southampton, in the press release. “Our findings suggest that previous assumptions about the risk of exposure to plastic in our oceans are likely, for better or for worse, to be far from the reality. Irrespective of the amount of plastic pollution, some species are relatively unaffected, whilst others are disproportionately vulnerable.”
The findings of the study will assist scientists and policymakers with filling in knowledge gaps and focusing their actions as details of the Global Plastics Treaty are finalized.
“The only true conservation strategy is to stop producing so much plastic – especially single-use plastic. Such items may only be used for minutes or even seconds, but they persist in the ocean for hundreds of years,” said study co-author Tamara Galloway, a marine scientist and ecotoxicology professor at the University of Exeter, in the press release.
Porter agreed that the best way to stop the damage plastics are doing to marine ecosystems is to bring an end to our reliance on them.
“The key is to stop plastics from entering the environment. It’s too big a job to clean up, plastic is forever in our ecosystem now; we just need to stop any more getting in. Plastic is such a useful product, but our use or abuse of it is what has caused the situation we see today; using a product that lasts hundreds of years to carry water around for a matter of minutes or hours, only to be too often discarded. Unfortunately, at the rate plastics are entering the marine environment the seafloor looks to only experience increasing microplastic concentrations which may have realised or unintentional consequences for life on the seafloor,” Porter told EcoWatch.
Team leader Stefanie Rog — a conservation biologist and senior program manager with Fauna & Flora International, which funded the study — recorded an astounding variety of species at the Peam Krasop sanctuary and adjacent Koh Kapid Ramsar wildlife reserve in Cambodia. Some of the animals they encountered included the critically endangered Sunda pangolin; endangered long-tailed macaques, large-spotted civet and hairy-nosed otters; the vulnerable fishing cat; and 74 fish species, a press release from Fauna & Flora said.
“We found 700 different species in these mangrove forests but we suspect we have not even scratched the surface,” Rog said, as The Guardian reported. “If we could look at the area in even greater depth we would find 10 times more, I am sure.”
Mangrove forests are found in tropical and subtropical coastal areas. They are specially adapted to flourish in both salt and brackish water, but 40 percent of them have been decimated in the past few decades due to land use changes such as agriculture and development.
Mangroves provide a variety of ecosystem services, such as acting as fish nurseries and reducing the impact of storm surges and the resulting damage to coastlines.
“We found young barracudas, snappers and groupers in the waters here,” Rog said, as reported by The Guardian. “They are clearly important breeding places for fish and provide local communities with food as well as providing stock for commercial fisheries.”
The survey was led by Fishing Cat Ecological Enterprise and Fauna & Flora, along with the Royal University of Agriculture’s faculty of fisheries and aquaculture and the Ministry of Environment.
The survey team conducted their field research during the dry and wet seasons of 2023. They set 57 camera traps across the protected area over 4,000 trap nights, the report said.
The experts also carried out targeted surveys that focused on reptiles, bats, amphibians, juvenile fish, invertebrates and plants.
“[T]hese results evidence an important array of wildlife in need of protection,” the report said. “Overall, priority should be given to maintaining forest condition and cover within the sanctuary, since the loss of older, larger trees (which typically provide more cavities, hollows and crevices) particularly threatens foliage-roosting species, whereas fragmentation of mature forest stands erodes the connectivity between suitable habitat. Cleared areas of mixed mangrove that have been abandoned should be left to regenerate naturally, as these areas are connected to natural seedling recruitment. Protection and patrolling activities should be conducted regularly in order to make sure that no further disturbance to these areas takes place.”
The rare fishing cat has webbed toes, which the large feline uses to swim through waters surrounding the mangroves, from which they hunt for fish and rats.
A fishing cat in the Peam Krasop wildlife sanctuary. Fauna & Flora / FCEE
“It’s very rare to see a fishing cat and we have only found out that they are in the forest from the photographs taken by our camera traps,” Rog said, as The Guardian reported. “Mangroves are places of roots and mud and they are difficult for humans to get into, which is why they provide precious sanctuaries for these vulnerable animals.”
The survey found 150 bird species, 15 of which are on the International Union for Conservation of Nature’s Red List as near-threatened or endangered.
“A mangrove forest relies on all the interconnected relationships between species and if you start taking away some of those species, then slowly you will lose the functioning of the forest,” Rog said, as reported by The Guardian. “[Mangrove forests] are so much more than just an ecosystem that provides a carbon-saving service or coastal protection. They are actually beautiful in their own right. For me, there is no better feeling than to be in this unique, mythical forest, knowing there is still so much more to explore – that there is another world waiting for further discovery.”
The researchers said calling attention to some of the incredible diversity of species who live in this watery wonderland can help support conservation and future investigation of a uniquely rich ecosystem.
“The results provided in this report, while an incomplete picture of the area’s biodiversity, highlight the conservation value of the Peam Krasop/Koh Kapik mangrove forests, and can serve to underpin stronger management of the area, as well as inform initiatives such as eco-tourism and further research,” the report said.
When U.S. homeowners buy subsidized flood insurance from the Federal Emergency Management Agency, they make a commitment to build back better after flood disasters, even if it costs them. FEMA’s notorious 50 percent rule stipulates that if a home in a flood zone suffers damages worth more than half its value, it must be torn down and rebuilt so it’s elevated above flood level. This can cost homeowners hundreds of thousands of dollars, but it prevents the American public from footing the bill for the repeated destruction of vulnerable homes — at least in theory.
Enforcement of the 50 percent rule largely falls to local officials in flood-damaged regions, who are charged with ensuring that their constituents aren’t rebuilding in flood zones. In exchange for this diligence, the federal government subsidizes low-cost flood insurance for homes in communities that certify their compliance with the rule, goosing red hot real estate markets in Florida and other scenic but climate-threatened regions.
As Florida continues rebuilding from 2022’s devastating Hurricane Ian, however, the Biden administration may be signaling that this era of easy money is over. Late last month, FEMA sent an explosive letter to local officials in Lee County, Florida, where over 750,000 people live near some of South Florida’s most prized coastal land. FEMA claimed that almost 600 homeowners in the city of Cape Coral and other nearby towns had rebuilt vulnerable homes in the flood zone over the 18 months since Hurricane Ian, violating the 50 percent rule as well as local construction laws.
The agency had long given the county and its cities a 25 percent discount on flood insurance in recognition of the county’s efforts to control flood risk, which saved residents millions of dollars a year. The letter threatened to yank away that discount, arguing that the county’s lax approach to the Hurricane Ian rebuild had negated those earlier efforts. The message was clear: After decades of risky construction in floodplains, the feds were putting their foot down.
This new effort to penalize floodplain construction is yet another sign that the long-hidden costs of climate change and development are starting to catch up with homeowners in coastal states — and at the very same time that housing costs more broadly are increasing for many Americans. FEMA has already raised flood insurance premiums across the country in recent years to keep up with mounting risk, and private home insurance companies have also hiked premiums for wind insurance in several states along the Gulf Coast.
The crackdown in Lee County represents an attempt by FEMA to shift the cost burden of climate risk away from the federal government (and the public that funds it) and onto local homeowners. This will test the strength of the area’s white-hot real estate market, potentially forcing many homeowners to walk away from their waterfront properties. As the federal government and private insurers both try to reduce their exposure to climate change, Lee County and its cities could be canaries in the coal mine for a housing market disfigured by mounting flood risk.
The reaction from these canaries has been swift and furious. Elected leaders from the county and the city blasted FEMA as “villains” and accused the agency of hampering Florida’s hurricane recovery at the behest of President Joe Biden. Lee County’s board of commissioners mulled suing the agency at a tense meeting a few days after the announcement. Local TV stations ran dozens of stories about the impact FEMA’s decision would have on homeowners, who are already dealing with a steep rise in both flood insurance and traditional property insurance, which covers wind damage.
“It’s almost like revenge politics,” said Cecil Pendergrass, a Lee County commissioner, during the county meeting after the announcement. “Our citizens, our taxpayers are being held hostage here.”
FEMA soon put its decision on pause, giving the county an extra 30 days to prove it hadn’t let homeowners break the 50 percent rule or build in the floodplain. It is unclear whether Lee County or cities like Cape Coral will be able to do that. Federal and local officials declined to provide Grist with details about the post-Ian violations, citing privacy concerns, but if homeowners have already rebuilt their destroyed properties, the county won’t be able to fix that within a month.
The bigger question for communities around the country is whether FEMA is changing how it enforces the 50 percent rule in an effort to force homeowners out of flood-prone areas.
“The floodplain management community is tracking this very closely,” said Susanna Pho, the founder of a flood risk firm called Forerunner, which helps flood-prone communities with FEMA compliance.
Lee County has long been a poster child for risky waterfront development. The city of Cape Coral sits on artificial filled land in what used to be a swampy section of Florida shoreline, with no barrier between the city’s urban landscape and the Gulf of Mexico. When hurricanes strike, as Ian did in 2022, they can push as much as 15 feet of storm surge through the city, inundating thousands of homes. Nearby cities such as Bonita Springs, which also caught a penalty from FEMA, aren’t much safer.
The 50 percent rule is supposed to reduce this risk over time by ensuring that flood-prone homeowners don’t rebuild the same vulnerable properties over and over. If a county determines that a home has suffered what FEMA calls “substantial damage,” it must force the homeowner to tear it down and elevate a new home above flood level, often on concrete pilings. If a county doesn’t comply, FEMA can kick it out of the federal flood insurance program, rendering homes more or less uninsurable, or downgrade its discounts as it did with Lee County. This rule acts as a de facto tax on risky property: Flood insurance payouts max out at $250,000 per home, which means homeowners are often on the hook for tearing down their houses and building new ones.
The problem is that determining what counts as “substantial damage” is a complicated process. Local officials conduct basic “windshield assessments” in the first few weeks after a storm, logging damage information that they can see from the street as they clear debris. They only do detailed examinations for the 50 percent rule when homeowners request permits to rebuild. But many homeowners never request permits from their city or county. Instead, they come back and patch up homes that they should be tearing down and rebuilding at higher elevations, and the local government either never catches them or looks the other way.
President Joe Biden speaks during a visit to Fort Myers, Florida, after 2022’s Hurricane Ian. The Biden administration is seeking to penalize Lee County and its cities for rebuilding in flood-prone areas after the storm.
Olivier Douliery / AFP via Getty Images
This mandate puts local governments in a tough political situation: They have FEMA on one side, urging them to enforce strict flood rules, and displaced homeowners on the other side, trying to get back in their homes without going broke. It’s unclear how much Lee County and its cities knew about the hundreds of rebuilt homes that FEMA alleges were noncompliant after Ian, but attempts to flout the 50 percent rule have been a scourge for the agency going back decades.
Albert Slap, a coastal planning consultant in Florida, said he understood why Lee County or cities like Cape Coral might have allowed homeowners to repair their homes without elevating.
“It’s pretty clear that the motivation is voters,” he said. “The people who got damaged are voters, and they’re going, ‘If you make me build back better, I’m not gonna be able to do it, and I’m leaving. I voted you guys into office and you’re screwing me.’”
Lee County says it followed normal protocol after Hurricane Ian, conducting basic damage assessments in the immediate aftermath of the storm and inspecting homes only later on when homeowners requested permits. Flood and disaster experts who spoke to Grist said this protocol is more or less standard across Florida and other hurricane-prone states, which raises the question of whether FEMA is changing the way it enforces the 50 percent rule and cracking down harder on rogue rebuilds.
FEMA didn’t answer questions about its enforcement strategy. In response to questions from Grist, a spokesperson said the agency is “committed to helping communities take appropriate remediation actions” to fix the rebuild violations. A spokesperson for Lee County said the county “will work with its partners at FEMA during a 30-day extension period.”
Adam Botana, a Republican state representative whose district encompasses much of Lee County, said he had faith that Lee County and other local governments would address the violations that FEMA identified and take action against homeowners who rebuilt without following FEMA regulations.
“Nobody likes the 50 percent rule, but I understand there have to be rules,” he told Grist. “Some municipalities may be a little more lax than others, but we have to keep everybody in line.” He added that he thinks the county will be able to prove many of the alleged violations didn’t take place.
Even if Lee County manages to contest the decision, homeowners in Southwest Florida are almost guaranteed to suffer more financial pain as a result of this enforcement effort. If FEMA stays the course and removes the discount, it will raise flood insurance costs for homeowners in unincorporated parts of the county between $14 and $17 million per year, equating to a $300 annual hit for each flood insurance customer in the area. But if Lee County cracks down on the 50 percent rule and FEMA restores the discount, homeowners who rebuilt in flood zones may have to spend hundreds of thousands of dollars to elevate their homes.
This new penalty comes on top of a much larger rate hike that FEMA has rolled out over the past few years as part of an effort to fix issues with the flood insurance program. This new system, called Risk Rating 2.0, will triple insurance costs in Lee County by the time it takes full effect, raising the average annual premium from around $1,300 to almost $4,000, with some of the most extreme bills ballooning well over $10,000 per year. Florida’s private insurance market for wind damage is also in a tailspin: More than 30 private carriers have pulled back from the state over the past two years, thanks in part to mounting hurricane risk. Those that have stuck around have doubled or tripled their prices.
Lisa Miller, a veteran Florida political consultant and former state insurance regulator, said the burden of rising costs shouldn’t trump the need to ensure that Lee County homes are resilient to future disasters.
“When I hear someone tell me they don’t want to pay $12,000 a year, I remind them, ‘We live in Florida,’” she said. “Our catastrophe risk is higher than almost anywhere in the world. What matters is, the homes that were repaired when they should have been torn down and rebuilt — will they withstand the next storm? That’s the question.”
