nature conservancy

Reef Insurance | Earth Wise

January 4, 2023 By EarthWise Leave a Comment

Coral reefs around the world face multiple dangers from warming waters, acidification, human activity, and more. Powerful storms often cause tremendous damage to reefs. When possible, snorkelers and divers are deployed to try to repair damage to reefs. But philanthropy and government grants are basically the only resources available to fund such actions.

Three years ago, tourist businesses and the government in the Mexican state of Quintana Roo purchased an insurance policy to offset costs of protecting the local parts of the Mesoamerican Reef. The environmental group the MAR Fund later took out an insurance policy on the rest of the reef in Mexico, Belize, Guatemala, and Honduras.

With this precedent, the Nature Conservancy recently purchased an insurance policy on behalf of the state of Hawaii to help offset repair work on its coral reefs. It is the first U.S. coral insurance contract.

Coral reefs are more than just hosts for marine life. They provide barriers against ocean storm surges, which is a major financial incentive for protecting them and hence an incentive to invest in insurance.

The new Hawaiian insurance policy has a premium of $110,000 a year and will provide $2 million in protection. Payouts occur when wind speeds go above 50 knots. No further proof of damage is required.

The Nature Conservancy has created teams called ‘Reef Brigades’ composed of snorkelers and divers who recover reef fragments, store them in ocean or shore-based nurseries, and then re-attach them when conditions are safe. It can be very expensive to do this sort of work, particularly when new corals grown in a nursery are required.

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Analysis: First U.S. coral insurance marks the rise of the reef brigades

Photo, posted September 14, 2011, courtesy of Greg McFall/NOAA Office of National Marine Sanctuaries via Flickr.

Earth Wise is a production of WAMC Northeast Public Radio

Saving Giant Sequoias | Earth Wise

October 13, 2022 By EarthWise Leave a Comment

Last year, the KNP Complex Fire burning in Sequoia National Park drew global attention as the General Sherman, the world’s largest tree, was wrapped in tinfoil-like material in order to repel the flames from the fire. Hundreds of firefighters labored for weeks trying to save giant redwood trees. Despite these efforts, the U.S. Forest Service estimates that wildfires killed 13% to 19% of the world’s giant sequoias in 2020 and 2021.

This past July, the Washburn Fire burned through part of Yosemite’s Mariposa Grove and the giant sequoias there were surrounded by automated sprinklers trying to shelter them from the flames.

For a century, government agencies have worked to extinguish all natural wildfires and prohibited Native people in the region from lighting the fires they traditionally used to manage their lands. As a result, forests have grown far thicker with trees that can fuel fires. The Sierras are now home to more than three times as many trees as when they were managed by indigenous communities. But more than 100 million of those trees had died by 2016 because of drought.

Add to this massive amount of kindling the effects of climate change – a hotter and drier environment – and there is the perfect storm for megafires among the giant sequoias.

There is federal legislation pending that would provide resources for prescribed burning and other forms of active forest management. It is controversial. It has attracted support from the Nature Conservancy, the Save The Redwoods League, and others, but also opposition from more than 80 environmental groups.

What is not controversial is that the Giant Sequoias are in the midst of a crisis and urgent action is needed.

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In California, a Race to Save the World’s Largest Trees From Megafires

Photo, posted December 10, 2014, courtesy of Laura Camp via Flickr.

Earth Wise is a production of WAMC Northeast Public Radio

Not All Trees Cool The Planet | Earth Wise

March 24, 2021 By EarthWise Leave a Comment

A new study from Clark University has found that deforestation does not always contribute to planetary warming, as is generally assumed. The researchers have found that there can be places where removing trees actually cools the planet.

Forests soak up carbon dioxide from the air and store it in the trees themselves and in the soil. This process is important for slowing the accumulation of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere.

The new research focuses on a different effect that forests have on climate. They are darker than other surfaces, which causes them to absorb more sunlight and retain heat. This is known as the albedo effect.

In most places, the absorption of carbon outweighs the albedo effect and forests help cool the planet. But there are some locations, including the Intermountain and Rocky Mountain West, where more forest actually leads to a hotter planet when both processes are taken into account. State-of-the-art satellite remote sensing allowed the researchers to quantify the effects of forest loss in the United States.

The upshot of this research is that large-scale tree-planting initiatives, such as Canada’s 2Billion Trees Initiative and the Nature Conservancy’s Plant a Billion Trees campaign need to make sure to put the right trees in the right places.

Every year, about a million acres of forest are being converted to non-forest across the lower 48 states as a result of suburban and exurban expansion and development. It is important to take into account the albedo effect in trying to replace the climate-cooling capabilities of these disappearing forests by planting more trees.

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Clark geographer Christopher Williams: More trees do not always create a cooler planet

Photo, posted June 5, 2017, courtesy of Todd Petrie via Flickr.

Earth Wise is a production of WAMC Northeast Public Radio.

The First Earth Fund Awards | Earth Wise

December 25, 2020 By EarthWise Leave a Comment

Last February, Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos announced that he was launching the Bezos Earth Fund that would grant money to scientists, activists, NGOs and others making an effort to help preserve and protect the natural world. The fund would start out with $10 billion and would begin issuing grants later in the year.

In November, the first Earth Fund award recipients were announced. In total, 16 organizations will be receiving nearly $800 million in funding.

The largest awards include the following: the Environmental Defense Fund received $100 million to build and launch MethaneSAT, a satellite that will locate and measure sources of methane pollution around the world and provide public access to data that assures accountability.

The Natural Resources Defense Council was awarded $100 million to advance climate solutions and legislation at the state level, promote policies and programs focused on reducing oil and gas production, protect and restore ecosystems that store carbon, and accelerate sustainable and regenerative agriculture practices.

The Nature Conservancy also received $100 million and plans to use the money to help protect the Emerald Edge forest. (That is the largest intact coastal rainforest on Earth, spanning 100 million acres through Washington, British Columbia and Alaska).

The World Resources Institute will receive $100 million, doled out over five years, to be used to develop a satellite-based monitoring system to advance natural climate solutions around the world.

An additional $100 million award went to the World Wildlife Fund to help protect and restore mangroves, develop new markets for seaweed as an alternative to fossil fuel-based products, and to protect forests and other ecosystems around the world.

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The organizations that will benefit from Bezos’ $791M and what will they do with the money

Photo, posted March 4, 2015, courtesy of Kevin Gill via Flickr.

Earth Wise is a production of WAMC Northeast Public Radio.

Family Forests And Climate Change | Earth Wise

July 13, 2020 By EarthWise Leave a Comment

Climate experts consider sequestration and storage of carbon in trees to be among the most affordable and scalable natural climate solutions. If implemented globally, trees could provide a third of the near-term climate change mitigation needed to meet the terms of the Paris Agreement.

Small family-owned forests make up 38% of U.S. forests, a total area 1.5 times the size of Texas and more than any other ownership type. Most small landowners want to do right by their land, but they rarely have access to the expertise or resources needed to optimize their forests for carbon sequestration.

This spring, the Nature Conservancy, the American Forest Foundation, and the Vermont Land Trust announced two new programs, funded in part by a $10 million grant by Amazon, that will provide funds to small landowners to grow larger, healthier forests.

Few forests are managed for carbon sequestration. Practices like fast logging rotations, so-called high-grading that strips out the largest, most valuable trees, and rampant invasive species all compromise the ability of a forest to lock away carbon. It turns out that most small landowners would like to do better, but they don’t have the expertise or the financial resources to implement sustainable management.

Existing carbon markets are not geared towards small forest owners. Their payments are tiny and the required contract terms are onerous. The Family Forest Carbon Program commits landowners for only 10 to 20 years. Typical landowners won’t get a windfall. A 100-acre landholding would stand to earn around $24,500 over 20 years.

If these programs can sign up 20% of U.S. forest landowners, it could offset the emissions from 6 million cars.

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How Small Family Forests Can Help Meet the Climate Challenge

Photo, posted July 14, 2013, courtesy of Joshua Mayer via Flickr.

Earth Wise is a production of WAMC Northeast Public Radio.

A Giant Marine Preserve | Earth Wise

May 4, 2020 By EarthWise Leave a Comment

The Seychelles islands are located east of Kenya, near the equator. Its beautiful beaches, virgin jungles, thriving coral reefs, and UNESCO-listed nature reserves are among the many attractions of the archipelago’s 115 islands. The larger inner islands are quite developed for tourists, studded with many luxurious five-star resorts. The natural wonders of the Seychelles are clearly its prime asset.

Given this, the Seychelles have now established 154,000 square miles of marine protected areas, fulfilling a pledge to protect nearly a third of its vast territorial waters. This is an area twice the size of Great Britain.

About half of the newly protected areas will be “no-take zones” in which economic activity such as fishing and mining will be prohibited. Only limited economic activities will be permitted in the other half of the protected areas.

The President of the Seychelles signed the decree establishing the marine reserve in mid-March. The reserve will help protect the nation’s fisheries resources and safeguard a host of species including endangered sea turtles, sharks, and the Indian Ocean’s last remaining population of dugongs, which are marine mammals similar to manatees.

The funding for managing and protecting the new marine reserves will come from what is termed a debt-for-nature deal. It is an agreement that was worked out with the help of The Nature Conservancy that allows the country to restructure nearly $22 million in foreign debt in exchange for protecting marine resources and enacting climate adaptation measures.

This major expansion of the Seychelles’ marine protected area is a major step in the conservation of the archipelago’s biodiversity. The success of that conservation will ultimately depend upon enforcement, public-private partnerships, and innovative management.

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Seychelles Creates a Marine Reserve Twice the Size of Great Britain

Photo, posted October 22, 2017, courtesy of Falco Ermet via Flickr.

Earth Wise is a production of WAMC Northeast Public Radio.

The Restoration Economy

March 2, 2018 By EarthWise Leave a Comment

Deforestation is one of the largest contributors to climate change. Forests cover about 30% of the world’s land area and are a crucial sink for carbon dioxide. Over time, we have been steadily reducing the amount of forest in the world to obtain wood and timber, open up farmland, build towns and cities, produce paper, make palm oil, and mine for minerals.

River Conservation And Hydropower

March 18, 2016 By WAMC WEB

Rivers concentrate the water and resources of an entire region. They are literally the lifeblood of much of the world’s fish population. They are also the fuel for hydropower, a critical energy source for human civilization.