Frank Carini: In search of old-growth forests

An old beech tree in the Rhode Island woods.

— Photo by Frank Carini

From ecoRI News (ecori.org)

WARWICK, R.I. — Last winter Nathan Cornell accidentally found himself “walking into a different world,” one that isn’t protected from human intervention. For the past two years, the University of Rhode Island graduate has been searching for old-growth forests in Rhode Island.

He found one not far from his Warwick home.

His hunt for old-growth forests led him and Rachel Briggs to found the Rhode Island Old Growth Tree Society, a nonprofit determined to locate, document, map and advocate for the preservation of all remaining old-growth and emerging old-growth trees and forests in the state. This means trees and groups of trees that are 100 years old and older.

Cornell, with the help of licensed arborist Matthew Largess, owner of Largess Forestry, in North Kingstown, R.I. has so far identified more than a dozen potential old-growth pockets, including on the University of Rhode Island campus in South Kingstown and in Cranston, North Kingstown, Portsmouth, Warwick and West Greenwich.

In mid-July, the 24-year-old took this ecoRI News reporter on a walking tour of the hidden-in-plain-sight “5- to 10-acre” Warwick property owned by the Community College of Rhode Island and Kent Hospital. To listen to the audio story, click the bar at the top.

Anyone interested in joining the Rhode Island Old Growth Tree Society, can contact Cornell at ncornell@my.uri.edu. To read an opinion piece written by Cornell and recently published on ecoRI News, click here.

Frank Carini is co-founder and a journalist at ecoRI News.

Tips for New England gardeners in drought

From ecoRI News (ecori.org)

For backyard gardeners, mild droughts and water-ban restrictions common during the summer can be a cause for concern. Kate Venturini Hardesty, a program administrator and educator with the University of Rhode Island’s Cooperative Extension, offers some tips for gardeners who are feeling the heat.

Let your lawn rest.

“Your lawn is on summer vacation,” she said. “Lawns are meant to go dormant in July and August. Many turf types are perennial species, so they rely on a break, much like the herbaceous perennials in our gardens. When we don’t allow them to rest, they’re weaker, just like you and I without a good night’s sleep. Refraining from watering the lawn saves a tremendous amount of water.”

While this may mean that your lawn is brown instead of a vibrant green, it will be beneficial for its overall health.

Don’t mow your lawn too low.

Mowing your lawn too far down will also have a negative impact on it. You don’t want to be the golf course of your neighborhood — the taller your grass is, the healthier it will be.

“The higher your mower is set, the deeper the roots are able to go underground to access soil moisture,” she said.

Water your crops and gardens as early in the day as possible.

“Don’t water any time but the morning,” she said. “It gives the plants some time to actually absorb the water before it evaporates.”

If you water at noon, you’ll lose a bunch of water to evaporation. If you water in the evening after the sun has set, you run the risk of causing fungal issues for your plants.

Know what plants are best for your garden.

When it comes to designing and planning your gardens and landscaping, it’s critical that you know which plants are the best suited for your space. Plants that are native to your area will generally do best because they evolved and are able to adapt to the way your local climate is changing on both the micro and macro levels.

The types of plants that are best to plant vary from garden to garden based on a variety of factors, including sun exposure, solid health, and drainage. Before you plant, do your research.

“A simple site assessment exercise can help you gather information about available sunlight and water, wind exposure, drainage and soil health,” she said. “The more information you have, the easier it is to choose plants that can tolerate the climate on your site.”

Venturini Hardesty said that, on average, New England tends to get about 45 inches of rain annually. If the average rain per week is about an inch, that leaves about seven weeks without rain, which happens to be almost the full length of the months of July and August.

The shifts that climate change will bring to backyard gardeners – and crop growing and planting as a whole – will need to be dealt with on a regional level, not in individual backyards, she said.

Cynthia Drummond: These clingers might send you to the ER

Clinging jellyfish

From ecoRI News (ecori.org)

CHARLESTOWN, R.I. — Recent warnings about the presence of clinging jellyfish in some coastal ponds have caused a stir, because the tiny organisms sting, and they are difficult to spot.

People who use the ponds should be aware of the possibility they might encounter clinging jellyfish, or gonionemus vertens.

Katie Rodrigue, principal marine biologist with the Rhode Island Department of Environmental Management’s Division of Marine Fisheries, has been monitoring clinging jellyfish, because while their sting is an unpleasant nuisance for most people, others may experience serious allergic reactions.

“The reason it’s a cause for concern is because, for some individuals, it can cause a severe sting,” she said. “In 2019, I believe it was, we had a couple of people end up in South County Hospital after being stung, because they had a pretty severe reaction to it.”

Clinging jellyfish have two life stages — a polyp and a medusa, which is produced by the polyp. The polyps, which are only about half a millimeter in size, are found in Rhode Island throughout the year and produce medusae in mid- to late summer. A single polyp will produce multiple medusae, and it is during this medusa stage that the organisms develop tentacles, and become jellyfish that sting.

“There’s two life stages of it, and the medusa stage is what we would recognize as the jellyfish — the bell with the tentacles,” Rodrigue said.

The clinging jellyfish is an invasive species that was first recorded on Cape Cod and in Groton, Conn., in the late 1800s. That population, which originated in the Eastern Pacific, declined as eelgrass beds died.

In the 1990s, clinging jellyfish began to make a comeback and are associated with a North Pacific species that produces more toxic stings.

How did this species get all the way to New England? Rodrigue said it could have made the trip as a polyp.

“Because that polyp stage can latch onto hard surfaces, it could have latched onto a ship’s hull,” she said. “I think one theory I read about was bringing oysters in. That could have brought in some of those polyps.”

What distinguishes clinging jellyfish is a reddish-brown “x” mark on the bell, but that marking doesn’t mean they are easy to detect.

“They’re really tough to see, especially during the day, and they get their name ‘clinging jellyfish’ because they like to hold on to eelgrass and other submerged vegetation,” Rodrigue said. “They sort of hide during the day and hang on, but if they get disturbed, say, if somebody’s walking through an eelgrass bed or something, they would release off of it and swim into the water column, and that’s when somebody would be able to encounter them.”

Clinging jellyfish have sticky tentacles, armed with cells with barbed structures called nematocysts, which contain venom.

“Those tentacles can kind of stick to your skin, and those nematocysts will fire,” Rodrigue said. “It’s almost like a tiny needle that penetrates the skin and it releases that venom into your skin, and that’s what causes the stinging sensation, and the tentacles have tons of nematocysts on them. Many jellyfish have this, and anemones, and other animals like that.”

Clinging jellyfish are active at night, hunting zooplankton.

“At night is when they’ll release themselves off of the eelgrass and then they’re in the water column, feeding on zooplankton,” Rodrigue said. “And so, they’ll be a little bit more mobile at night.”

So far this summer, clinging jellyfish have been recorded in Potter Pond in South Kingstown and parts of Ninigret Pond. In previous years, they have been documented in Point Judith Pond and the Narrow River. It’s important to keep in mind, however, that they could be living in other waterbodies and just haven’t been spotted yet.

Clinging jellyfish are not the only species that people should be watching for. Salt Ponds Coalition president Arthur Ganz, a retired marine biologist, said he had not been notified of any encounters with clinging jellyfish this summer and described the stinging sea nettle jellyfish as being far more numerous.

“Sea nettles are very abundant in the ponds, more so, I’m going to say, over the last 20 years,” Ganz said. “Their numbers have very much increased. We’d see them occasionally in the real hot summer, but now, they’re everywhere. I was out on my boat and I just looked down at my mooring and there was probably 20 within a square meter. So, they are the ones that are the biggest nuisance.”

More benign, non-stinging jellyfish species such as comb and moon jellies also inhabit the Ocean State’s coastal ponds.

“They don’t have obvious tentacles and they don’t bother people,” Ganz said. “It’s essentially the sea nettles that are the biggest problem.”

On the ocean side, beachgoers should steer clear of the cyanea, or lion’s mane jellyfish, which can grow to be very large and is armed with long, stinging tentacles.

“They’ll give you a nasty sting, and what happens with the cyanea is, on the ocean side, they’ll break up in the surf, so the tentacles are floating free, so even though you don’t have one right there in your vision, you could get nailed by the broken-up tentacles,” Rodrigue said.

She suggests people who plan to spend time in the calmer areas of the salt ponds, especially near eelgrass beds, wear protective clothing.

“If you’re going to be in one of these coastal-pond environments, an area that’s very calm and protected and has a lot of submerged vegetation, I suggest just covering up,” she said. “If there’s a barrier between the jellyfish and your skin, that’s going to be the best bet to avoid getting stung; waders, wet suit, even leggings will all help with that.”

People who are stung should apply plain, white vinegar to the affected area.

“What that’ll do is at least prevent any more stinging cells from firing,” Rodrigue said, adding that the old remedy of pouring urine on a sting is definitely not recommended.

“Do not do that,” she said. “If anything, that can actually make it worse. That, or using fresh water. A lot of people, because of the irritation, they might want to dump some cool, fresh water on it, but that’ll actually cause more stinging cells to fire on your skin.”

DEM asks people who encounter clinging jellyfish to contact the agency at 401-423-1923 or by email at DEM.MarineFisheries@dem.ri.gov. Reports can also be posted on Facebook or Instagram.

Cynthia Drummond is an ecoRI News contributor.

Frank Carini: Will federal reprieve be enough to save these very fast sharks?

An Atlantic shortfin mako shark

From ecoRI News (ecori.org)

The world’s fastest-swimming shark is about to get a reprieve from overfishing.

Beginning July 5, the landing or possession of Atlantic shortfin mako sharks in the United States has been prohibited. This rule applies to commercial fishermen, recreational anglers and any dealers who buy or sell shark products. These sharks frequent southern New England waters.

The ban includes sharks that are dead or alive when captured, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s National Marine Fisheries Service (NOAA Fisheries).

The recent decision has long been supported by shark-research organizations concerned about the significant issues that this species faces. Defenders of Wildlife and the Center for Biological Diversity sent a notice June 28 to Gina Raimondo, U.S. secretary of commerce, and Janet Coit, assistant administrator for NOAA Fisheries, of their intent to sue for failing to protect the shortfin mako shark under the Endangered Species Act.

“The shortfin mako shark is the world’s fastest-swimming shark, but it can’t outrace the threat of extinction,” Jane Davenport, a senior attorney at Defenders of Wildlife, is quoted in a press release about the organizations’ intent. “The government must follow the science and provide much-needed federal protections as quickly as possible. This will demonstrate America’s leadership in fisheries and ocean wildlife conservation both at home and on the world stage.”

The shortfin mako is a highly migratory species whose geographic range extends throughout the world’s tropical and temperate oceans. They can reach a top speed of 45 mph, and, like tunas and the white shark, shortfin mako sharks have a specialized blood vessel structure — called a countercurrent exchanger — that allows them to maintain a body temperature that is higher than the surrounding water. This adaptation provides them with a major advantage when hunting in cold water. As an apex predator, the species is an integral part of the marine food web.

The species, however, faces a barrage of threats, especially overfishing from targeted catch and bycatch. The species’ highly valued fins and meat incentivize this overexploitation.

“The shortfin mako shark has long been a target of commercial fisheries and consumers due to its excellent taste, and to sport fishermen for its spectacular strength and leaping ability,” said Jon Dodd, executive director of the Wakefield, R.I.-based Atlantic Shark Institute. “Unfortunately, those are the same issues that have resulted in the significant population decline of this iconic shark that required this complete and unprecedented closure.”

Dodd noted female mako sharks don’t reproduce until they are about 20 years old and weigh some 600 pounds.

“I’ve seen hundreds of mako sharks and exactly one that size in all my years researching this spectacular shark,” he said. “It’s amazing that they can even reach that age and size with all the fishing pressure and risks they face.”

Since mako sharks have few young, and they take time off between giving birth, Dodd said the numbers don’t favor their long-term survival without significant management changes.

Three years ago the International Union for Conservation of Nature classified the shortfin mako as “endangered” on its Red List of Threatened Species.

“The Fisheries Service failed to protect the shortfin mako despite an international scientific consensus that conservation action is urgently needed,” Alex Olivera, a senior scientist at the Center for Biological Diversity, said in the June 28 press release that quoted Davenport. “Even as the rest of the world scrambles to save these sharks from extinction, they have no protections under the U.S. Endangered Species Act. That needs to change.”

On NOAA Fisheries’ species directory Web page for the shortfin mako shark, it reads: “U.S. wild-caught Atlantic shortfin mako shark is a smart seafood choice because it is sustainably managed and responsibly harvested under U.S. regulations.”

On the same page the federal agency notes that, according to the 2017 stock assessment, shortfin mako sharks are “overfished and subject to overfishing.”

In a 2019 assessment, the International Commission for the Conservation of Atlantic Tunas (ICCAT) estimated that as much as 4,750 metric tons of mako shark were being taken on an annual basis.

“It was time to give the mako shark a break, but even so, we are still looking at a recovery that will take until 2070,” Dodd said. “This is not a quick fix by any means, and the mako still faces significant challenges.”

If ICCAT provides for U.S. harvest in the future, NOAA Fisheries could increase the shortfin mako shark retention limit, based on regulatory criteria and the amount of retention allowed by ICCAT. Until that happens, the retention limit will remain at zero, according to the agency.

Frank Carini is senior reporter and co-founder of ecoRI News.

Frank Carini: Working to reduce environmental impact of ocean racing sailboats

From ecoRI News (ecori.org)

While the United States flails about trying to reduce its enormous share of world-altering climate pollution, one part of the transportation/recreational sector is routinely ignored: boating.

Yachting and sailing are steadily gaining in popularity, so an urgency to act is essential if greenhouse-gas emissions are to be significantly reduced.

Yes, sailing burns little fossil fuel, but the resources consumed to build some of these vessels is swelling.

For instance, over the past decade, the carbon footprint of 60-foot International Monohull Open Class Association (IMOCA) racing boats has grown by nearly two-thirds, from 340 to 550 tons — the equivalent of driving an average car 1.4 million miles, according to the 11th Hour Racing Team.

“This is an overall trend we see in pretty much any industry, driven by performance we have accelerated too fast in the wrong direction, and are only just waking up to reality,” according to Damian Foxall, sustainability program manager for the 11th Hour Racing Team. “The need to reduce our emissions in the marine industry is urgent — 50% by 2030, and that’s just eight years away. We are far away from that right now.”

The 11th Hour Racing Team is sponsored by 11th Hour Racing, a Newport, R.I.-based nonprofit that works with the sailing community and maritime industries to “advance solutions and practices that protect and restore the health of our ocean.”

Late last year the team published a report about the importance of building a more sustainable ocean racing boat and better understanding the industry’s environmental impact. It showed performance doesn’t need to be sacrificed to build a more environmentally friendly boat.

“Business as usual is no longer an option. While the performance sailing sector and much of the leisure marine industry is geographically centered in the global North and a few other well-off regions, we live in a fragile bubble of prosperity,” according to the report. “This alternative reality does not reflect either the reality for most of the world’s citizens, or the availability of the earth’s resources.

“Inherently tied to the ongoing growth of global economies, we would need 1.7 Earths each year just to maintain the situation for the average global citizen. Scaled to the typical lifestyles associated with the marine industry this is more like 5+ Earths each year: a growing annual debt,” the report says.

The 128-page report includes a detailed study of material life cycles and alternative composites, such as flax to replace ubiquitous virgin carbon fiber. About 80 percent of greenhouse gas emissions in a boat build are associated with the use of composite materials, most notably carbon fiber, which is perfect for racing because it is light and stiff. Reducing the use of this material and others would significantly lessen climate emissions tied to the building of a new racing boat, according to the 11th Hour Racing Team.

In fact, the 11th Hour Racing Team and its partners are advocating for radical change across the marine industry to transform the way boats are built. They believe that only by “prioritizing sustainability along with performance, can the marine industry take urgent action to fight climate change.”

Foxall recently told ecoRI News that sustainable sourcing and using as much renewable energy as possible are the two biggest things racing teams can do right now to lower their carbon footprints.

The 11th Hour Racing Team, for instance, now leases an electric support vessel during races, which has lowered climate emissions from both a transportation and manufacturing perspective.

Foxall said rule changes would require sailing teams to incorporate more sustainable materials into their design and build. He noted, for example, reused carbon fiber is mostly avoided because the virgin material makes for better performance. But if rules required every team to use recycled fiber, no team would have an advantage.

“In our sport, rules define what the boats are … as much as one team or a couple of teams or even an event might want to improve the footprints, that cannot happen until the rules incentivize it,” Foxall said. “And the rules for the longest time have incentivized performance, whether it is carrying more sacks of coal or corn from Australia to Europe or transporting more people from Europe to North America or now racing faster and going faster through the water. It’s all about performance.”

He added the sport can no longer “just make decisions based purely on performance. We need to be taking into account the direct and indirect impacts” on the environment.

The December report recommends establishing minimum standards on sourcing, energy, waste, and resource circularity; defining a threshold for carbon emissions based on life cycle assessment (LCA) data; incentivizing the marine industry to use its inherent capacity for innovation to focus on sustainability; and setting an internal price for carbon emissions.

Amy Munro, sustainability officer for the 11th Hour Racing Team, noted the building of a racing boat is a complex process involving a number of stakeholders, materials, and components.

“You need to break it down in detail to fully understand what are the major impacts,” according to Munro. “This is why we have meticulously measured the impact of every step in the design and build process of our new boat and conducted a life cycle analysis that helps to uncover underlying issues.”

Last month, Charlie Enright, 11th Hour Racing Team skipper, spoke at the U.N.-supported One Ocean Summit in Brest, France, to highlight key findings of the organization’s “Sustainable Design and Build Report,” notably the importance of industry-wide collaboration to push sustainable innovation to align with the Paris Agreement.

“Within our sport, for too long we have chased performance over a responsibility for the environment and people,” the Bristol, R.I., native told an audience of experts, politicians, activists, and decision-makers. “We must work together to reduce the impact of boat builds, adopt the use of alternative materials like bio-resins and recycled carbon, lobby for a change to class and event rules to reward sustainable innovations, and support races and events that are managed with a positive impact on our planet and people.”

Foxall noted about 50 percent of sailors are onboard when it comes to making their sport more sustainable. He said it is their responsibility to bring the others up to speed about the impacts of the climate crisis.

In an email to ecoRI News, Enright noted the sport’s awareness of climate and environmental issues is “definitely increasing.” He said big events such as The Ocean Race and the Transat Jacques Vabre have “strong sustainability policies” in place, including plastic-free race villages, onboard waste calculation initiatives, and efforts to educate teams and fans about these matters. “This is relatively new in our sport.”

The Ocean Race also runs an ocean science program in partnership with 11th Hour Racing, collecting data on water temperature, salinity, and other potential climate change impacts. The Transat Jacques Vabre uses the 11th Hour Racing Team’s Sustainability Toolbox, which, among other things, commits to efforts to limit waste, use renewable energy and reduce emissions wherever possible, as a framework for its own sustainability program.

“Of course there are those who need a bit more convincing on the importance of it,” Foxall said. “But, quite frankly … kids coming home from school today know what the issue is.”

In 2019, greenhouse-gas emissions from ships and boats in the United States alone totaled 40.4 million metric tons of carbon dioxide equivalent. Globally, bulk carriers are the main source of shipping/boating climate emissions. Some 90 percent of world trade is carried across the world’s oceans by some 90,000 marine vessels. Carbon dioxide emissions from these vessels are largely unregulated.

Last year, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) did adopt exhaust emission standards for marine diesel engines installed in a variety of marine vessels, ranging in size and application from small recreational boats to large ocean-going ships.

While the shipping industry is responsible for a significant proportion of global climate emissions — if global shipping were a country, it would be the sixth-largest producer of greenhouse gases behind China, the U.S., Russia, India and Japan — the climate impacts of the recreational powerboat industry, most notably yachts, are considerable.

The propulsion systems on many yachts are arguably the least-efficient modes of transportation ever devised. The typical 40- to 50-foot yacht guzzles fuel.

U.S. recreational boaters spend about 500 million hours annually cruising fresh and salt waters. In 2010, more stringent EPA emissions standards for marine engines, both in-board and outboard, went into effect. But, unlike cars, private boats are not inspected. They can be checked by the Coast Guard or law enforcement, but there is no annual emissions check.

Many recreational boats and some jet-propelled watercraft have two-stroke engines. Conventional two-stroke engines produce about 14 times as much climate pollution as four-stroke engines.

Last year new U.S. powerboat sales surpassed 300,000 units for the second consecutive year, closing 2021 about 6 percent below record highs in 2020 and some 7 percent above the five-year sales average, according to the National Marine Manufacturers Association. In 2020, annual U.S. sales of boats, marine products and services totaled $49.3 billion, up 14 percent from 2019.

The oceans play an essential role in keeping atmospheric carbon dioxide in balance by absorbing about 30 percent of the CO2 that is released, from all sources. This blue carbon sink, however, has been working overtime since the Industrial Revolution began belching fossil fuels into the atmosphere.

The ocean, though, can only swallow so much of this colorless gas. When carbon dioxide is absorbed by seawater, chemical reactions occur that increase the acidity of the water through a process known as ocean acidification.

Acidifying marine waters are bad news for marine life with calcium carbonate in their shells or skeletons, such as oysters, corals, crabs, scallops, and mussels. Studies have found that more acidic salt waters make it more difficult for them to develop their hardened protection.

As of early last month, the recorded amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere was a tick away from 418 parts per million (ppm) — well beyond the 350 ppm that climate scientists have deemed safe for humans, never mind most of the planet’s other living inhabitants.

“While the situation is extremely urgent and ‘business-as-usual’ is clearly no longer an option, it is still technically possible to close your eyes and look away,” Enright wrote. “This is why we have to act now and we have to create our own pressure. What we need is a radical change and one of the most important parts here is that the marine industry works together to achieve it.”

Frank Carini is co-founder and senior reporter of ecoRI News.

Azzam, at 592.5 feet, was the longest superyacht, as of 2020.

— Photo by ChrisKarsten  

Frank Carini: Valiantly fighting epidemic of shoreline trash

During a single day in May 2019, Geoff Dennis and trusted sidekick Koda collected 282 balloons from the Little Compton, R.I., coastline. It was the duo’s largest balloon haul.

— Courtesy photos

From ecoRI News (ecori.org)

The mission is simple but the work is aggravating, especially since Geoff Dennis’ four-legged buddy no longer joins him on the almost-daily treks. Also, he doesn’t get paid.

For the past decade, the Little Compton, R.I., resident has been picking up other people’s trash that accumulates along the local shoreline. Between 2012 and 2020, Dennis picked up 35,607 pieces of litter from the banks of the Sakonnet River, at Goosewing Beach Preserve and a few other places. The vast majority of it was some form of plastic, from bottles to spent shotgun shells.

Despite “still missing my boy Koda” — his trusted black Lab died two days after Christmas 2020 at the age of 14 — the longtime quahogger and bird photographer remains a one-person cleanup crew.

“I miss him as much today as that last day with him,” Dennis said.

His immersion into litter began in 2012 while monitoring piping plovers at Goosewing Beach for The Nature Conservancy. The amount of plastic debris at his feet disgusted him.

When he returned, he picked up more than 100 Mylar balloons from the area. He’s been picking up coastline trash ever since. He’s bothered that 10 years later, most people still don’t seem to care about the state’s growing plastic problem.

Dennis said graduation time brings the greatest number of depleted balloons. July and August are the height of trash collection.

He recently tallied up his 2021 trash scorecard. Here is the breakdown:

Mylar balloons: 1,388.

Plastic bottles and aluminum cans: 1,349. He said year-end totals do not include old plastic bottles that have “become eggshell brittle and started the process of fragmenting. They go directly to trash.”

Plastic bottle caps: 1,209.

Latex balloons: 780. He said latex balloons are usually only the mouth piece, or ring piece, with attached ribbon. “I do find shredded pieces of latex too, but tally only the ring. Sometimes difficult to count when it may be a 30-plus mass of rings and tangled ribbon.”

Plastic straws: 328.

Spent plastic shotgun shells: 302.

Nips: 195.

Rubber gloves: 164.

Plastic and foam cups: 132. He said Dunkin’ Donuts (67) and Cumberland Farms (38) cups are the most common. “CF is still using foam cups and all found are foam. DD ceased using foam in 2020. Plenty of their paper cups were collected but are not in the tally.”

Golf balls: 119.

Plastic lids for plastic and foam cups: 104.

Plastic wads for shotgun shells: 86.

Plastic bags: 66.

Plastic cigarette lighters: 50.

Plastic K-cups: 45.

Since Dennis returned to Goosewing Beach 10 years ago to pick up Mylar balloons, there are 41,924 fewer pieces of litter along the Little Compton shoreline.

A trio of bills has been introduced during the current General Assembly session to address the Ocean State’s plastic pollution problem, including legislation to ban the sale of nips.

Frank Carini is senior reporter and co-founder of ecoRI News.

The Benjamin Family Environmental Center at the Goosewing Beach Preserve

The Sakonnet River as viewed from Portsmouth, R.I., looking south towards the ocean.

Roger Warburton: Nearby ocean warming a climate-change warning for New England

The changes in heat content of the top 700 meters of the world’s oceans between 1955 and 2020.

— Chart by Roger Warburton/NCEI and NOAA

From ecoRI News

New England’s historical and cultural identity is inextricably linked to the ocean that laps at nearly 6,200 miles of coastline. And the region’s ocean waters are warming, and not just a little.

The above chart shows just how much the ocean has warmed over the past 65 years and, due to the accumulation of greenhouse gases, the heat dumped into the ocean has doubled since 1993. It is even more concerning that ocean warming has accelerated since 2010.

The world’s oceans, in 2021, were the hottest ever recorded by humans.

The findings of the data from the National Centers for Environmental Information (NCEI), which is part of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), have been confirmed by Australia’s Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organization, China’s Institute of Atmospheric Physics, and the Japan Meteorological Agency’s Meteorological Research Institute.

The news for New England is worse, as the ocean here is heating up faster than that of the rest of the world.

This map illustrates the seasonally averaged sea-surface temperature anomaly in the Gulf of Maine.

—Gulf of Maine Research Institute

The Gulf of Maine Research Institute announced that between September and November of last year, the warmth of inlet waters adjacent to Maine and northern Massachusetts was the highest on record.

“This year [the Gulf of Maine] was exceptionally warm,” said Kathy Mills, who runs the Integrated Systems Ecology laboratory at the Gulf of Maine Research Institute. “I was very surprised.”

The Gulf of Maine is warming faster than 96 percent of the world’s oceans, increasing at a rate of 0.1 degrees Celsius (0.18 degrees Fahrenheit) annually over the past four decades.

The increased concentration of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere traps heat in the air. The air in contact with the ocean transfers heat to the ocean, increasing what is called the ocean heat content (OHC).

The first measurements of ocean data were taken on Capt. James Cook’s second voyage (1772-1775). Although not very accurate, those measurements were among the first instances of oceanographic data recorded and preserved.

Today, ocean measurements are taken by a variety of modern instruments deployed from ships, airplanes, satellites and, more recently, underwater robots. A 2013 study by John Abraham, a professor at the University of St. Thomas, contains an interesting historical overview of ocean measurements.

Abraham’s study used data from new instruments, such as expendable bathythermographs and Argo floats. The Argo program is an array of more than 3,000 autonomous floats that return oceanic climate data and has advanced the breadth, quality and distribution of oceanographic data.

As heat accumulates in the Earth’s oceans, they expand in volume, making this expansion one of the largest contributors to sea-level rise.

Although concentrations of greenhouse gases have risen steadily, the change in ocean-heat content varies from year to year, as the chart above shows. Year-to-year changes are influenced by events, such as volcanic eruptions and recurring patterns such as El Niño. In fact, in the chart one can detect short-term cooling from major volcanic eruptions of Mounts Agung (1963), El Chichón (1982) and Pinatubo (1991).

The ocean’s temperature plays an important role in the Earth’s climate crisis because heat from ocean surface waters provides energy for storms and influences weather patterns.

Roger Warburton, Ph.D., is a Newport, R.I., resident. He can be reached at rdh.warburton@gmail.com.

References: Cheng, L. J, and Coauthors, 2022, “Another record: Ocean warming continues through 2021 despite La Niña conditions. Adv. Atmos. Sci., https://doi.org/10.1007/s00376-022-1461-3.

Abraham, J. P., et al. (2013), “A review of global ocean temperature observations: Implications for ocean heat content estimates and climate change,” Rev. Geophys.,51, 450–483, https://agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1002/rog.20022.

Cynthia Hammond: Does Conn.-R.I. Amtrak bypass plan still live?

Amtrak Acela train near Old Saybrook, Conn.

From ecoRI News (ecori.org)

CHARLESTOWN, R.I.

A U.S. Department of Transportation “Providence to New Haven Capacity Planning Study” has some local officials wondering whether the original plan to run train tracks through sections of their town, and other Rhode Island and Connecticut towns, might not be dead after all.

The study is part of the Northeast Corridor 2035 Plan, or “C35,” a 15-year plan to guide investment in rail service in the Northeast.

The C35 describes the plan, which has an estimated cost of $130 billion, as the first phase of the long-term vision for the corridor described in the Federal Railroad Administration’s 2017 NEC Future plan, which includes “making significant improvements to NEC rail service for both existing and new riders, on both commuter rail systems and Amtrak.”

In 2016, Charlestown officials learned, by chance, that the Federal Railroad Administration (FRA) had released its Tier 1 environmental impact statement (EIS) on a plan to straighten train tracks in the Northeast to accommodate high-speed rail service. The plan wasn’t met with broad enthusiasm.

The FRA had sent letters to affected towns and the Narragansett Indian Tribe in 2015, soliciting comments on the draft EIS, but according to a blog post on the plan by the Charlestown Citizens Alliance political action committee, there was no specific mention of new tracks going through Charlestown or other neighboring towns.

"Most of these governments have no recollection of receiving communication from the FRA,” the post read. “The letter does not say that new rails and a new rail route are proposed in your community. When no comments came from one of the most impacted towns, this should have suggested to the FRA that the local community and local stakeholders were not aware and engaged in the review process.”

The unpleasant surprise included in the plan was the Old Saybrook to Kenyon Bypass, which would have moved rail traffic directly through Old Saybrook, Conn., Westerly and Charlestown, bisecting neighborhoods, nature preserves and historic farms. The towns and Narragansett Indian Tribal officials fought the plan, and the Record of Decision, released in 2017, omitted the bypass.

But the omission didn’t mean that the bypass had simply gone away, and the Charlestown Citizens Alliance warned that the decision left the door open to a study which could resurrect the bypass.

The alliance’s blog post published after the decision reads: “The July 12, 2017 ROD calls for a study that could possibly bring back the Bypass. We will remain vigilant throughout this study process to work to stop the Bypass from being resurrected.”

In an effort to learn more about the FRA’s intentions, Town Council President Deborah Carney spoke last August with Amtrak’s chief executive officer, William J. Flynn, who said the most likely route for a New Haven to Providence high-speed rail track would be along the Interstate 95 corridor.

Carney, who said she had been put in contact with Flynn by a mutual acquaintance in Charlestown, acknowledged that while there is no guarantee that plans for the original bypass that would have bisected the town would not be revived, she felt reassured that the I-95 route would be preferred.

“They’re doing the feasibility study and analysis, so there’s no concrete plan at all, but [Flynn] said if they were to go forward with something, it would most likely either to parallel Route 95, like the northern part of the state, or it would involve improving the existing line that goes along the southern coast - where it is now.”

Rhode Island Department of Transportation (DOT) director Peter Alviti represents the state on the 18-member FRA Northeast Corridor Commission (NECC), which is studying rail demand and capacity in the Northeast New Haven to Providence rail corridor.

Alviti, and DOT intermodal programs chief Stephen Devine, met in November with Charlestown officials, Rhode Island state Rep. Blake Filippi, R-New Shoreham, and state Sen. Elaine Morgan, R-Hopkinton.

Alviti told the group the NECC would require a study of future ridership demand on the New Haven to Providence route before any decision was made. (DOT did not support the originally proposed Old Saybrook to Kenyon bypass.)

DOT spokesperson Charles St. Martin said in a recent emailed statement that his agency was counting on more public consultation this time around.

“Yes, RIDOT met recently with Charlestown officials regarding this proposal,” he said. “We told them we are aware that Amtrak is retaining a consultant to do an initial market study only to first determine the demand for higher speed services. This effort will be starting soon and will include a robust public participation component.”

St. Martin also noted, “Rhode Island’s position remains the same as in 2017, when the state indicated opposition of the bypass route in Charlestown.”

What still vexes some Charlestown officials, however, is the continued lack of any FRA response to the town’s inquiries.

In August 2021, at the request of the Town Council, town administrator Mark Stankiewicz wrote a letter to FRA interim administrator Amit Bose, asking for more information regarding the New Haven to Providence study.

After receiving no response to the first letter, Stankiewicz sent a second letter on Dec. 10, which read, in part, “Given the limited available information and the absence of any communication from the FRA, we are in a quandary as to how to ensure Charlestown receives timely information and is able to relay our input and concerns about the New Haven to Providence Capacity Planning Study.”

Charlestown Planning Commission chair Ruth Platner, who was not mollified by Flynn’s statements, said she had not expected the FRA to respond.

“I’m not surprised that they’re not answering, but I think it’s important that the town is asking,” she said. “The thing is, they took the [Old Saybrook to Kenyon] bypass out of the decision, but they didn’t replace it with anything, and the whole rail plan is based on the assumption that there’s going to be huge job growth in the big cities — in Washington, Philadelphia New York and Boston, but that’s not Rhode Island and that’s not Connecticut. The high-speed rail is to connect those big cities, and they want to do it, one way or another.”

Platner said she believed that pandemic-related changes which have made it possible for many Americans to move out of large cities and work from home will impact the study.

“I think what’s happened now, because of the pandemic, there’s kind of a wait and see, to see what this means for growth. Are the cities not going to grow?” she said.

Another factor to consider, Platner said, is the proximity of the I-95 corridor to the coast, and therefore, its vulnerability to rising sea levels.

“It’s a beautiful ride, and it’s right along the coast, and the water is right there. The tracks are going to be under water, so they have to do something, and the problem has to be solved, and it’s going to be solved with some sort of realignment away from the coast,” she said.

Carney said her concerns had been largely put to rest after her conversation with Flynn and the meeting with Alviti.

“In our conversations with Peter Alviti, and also William Flynn, it doesn’t seem as though that Old Saybrook to Kenyon is going to be revived, but I understand where people are coming from,” she said. “You know, if it’s their property that’s impacted, obviously they’re concerned about it, but I will say that Director Alviti kind of put our minds at ease, you know, in saying ‘This is not in the 10-year plan.’”

Platner, however, warned the affected towns to remain vigilant.

“The town of Charlestown needs to be involved, so that we can protect the people and the environment here,” she said. “What we don’t want is to have a plan be created that we don’t know about.”

The FRA did not respond to several requests for comment.

Cynthia Hammond is an ecoRI News contributor

Caitlin Faulds: Trying to save a drowning coastal marsh

Wenley Ferguson, of Save the Bay, and many others have spent more than five years trying to save the drowning Sapowet Marsh, in Tiverton. R.I. marsh.

— Photo by Caitlin Faulds/ecoRI News)

Common reed (Phragmites australis) is an invasive species in degraded marshes in the Northeast.

Salt marsh during low tide, mean low tide, high tide and very high tide (spring tide).

From ecoRI News (ecori.org)

TIVERTON, R.I.

The grasses are dying. Clusters of broken, denuded stems stand in shallow pools of brackish water, making a patchwork of the low-lying marshlands.

The slow balding is invisible from the blacktop of Seapowet Avenue, hidden behind a thick curtain of phragmites. But standing boot-deep in the peat, surrounded by the sulfuric scent of decomposition, the bare ground is clear evidence of the steady saltwater creep happening in marshes across Rhode Island.

Spartina alterniflora, or smooth cordgrass, is notoriously salt-tolerant and a common feature in saltwater marsh environments.

“They can grow along the edge of the cove and get flooded twice a day, but they can’t grow in standing water,” said Wenley Ferguson, shovel in hand. All around, the sunlight glints off pools of standing water, unable to drain and slowly growing with each high tide.

The average sea level in Rhode Island has increased by about a foot since 1929. Storm surges and king tides have pushed further and further inland. Normally, the marsh would respond to the rising high-water line by matching the migration inland.

But with the sea on one side and a dense web of roads, development, cultivated fields, and invasive species on the other — and accelerated sea-level rise on its way — Sapowet Marsh has nowhere to move.

But Ferguson, the director of habitat restoration at Save The Bay, is working to save the marsh from that saltwater grave.

Ferguson has been working with the Rhode Island Department of Environmental Management (DEM) at the Sapowet Marsh Wildlife Management Area, a 260-acre state property, for more than five years now.

The coastal edge of Sapowet has seen more than 90 feet of shoreline erosion in the past 75 years. Under Ferguson’s watch, Sapowet has become home to the largest marsh migration facilitation project in the state — a small counter to the forces at play.

“When I say facilitate marsh migration,” she said, “it’s kind of like prepping the land for the marsh to migrate.”

Back in 2017 and 2018, Save The Bay and DEM, along with the Tiverton Conservation Commission, restored 9 acres of coastal grassland and reestablished beachside dunes on the northern side of the marsh to slow erosion.

Now the work has moved to the west and southeast sides of the marsh — and the strategy has changed to match.

Along the western front
The cordgrass roots are taut, but they cut easy. Just one stomp and the shovel sinks through the muck, water pooling up and over the toes of Ferguson’s black rubber boots.

It was a warm and clear November day — too warm, according to Ferguson. She packed for a cool fall day and wore a blue-flowered fleece, but 60 degrees means she’ll be sweating by midday.

Earlier in the week, Ferguson — along with a handful of DEM employees and volunteers — used shovels and a small excavator to dig a weaving network of runnels through the marsh. These shallow creeks will give the pooling water a route out to Narragansett Bay, allowing the area to slowly drain.

If the root zone of the marsh plants is able to dry even slightly, they will grow “healthy and happy,” Ferguson said. Healthy plants build up a stronger root base, and a stronger root base makes a coastline more resilient to erosion and sea-level rise.

But “we don’t want to drain it too fast,” she said. It has been three days since they dug the first runnels and the water level has dropped only slightly, exposing a few inches of bare mud — exactly as planned.

The standing water is thick with unconsolidated sediments and topped by a bacterial mat. If the water rushes out all at once, this sediment will pour into the bay. It’s better to dig in phases and let it settle out in the marsh, maintaining as much high ground as possible.

They are back on this day to adjust the runnels, excavating the areas where the muck has naturally dammed up. Lucianna Faraone Coccia, a Save The Bay volunteer and an environmental science master’s student at the University of Rhode Island, shovels out a cluster of grass roots.

“If that’s in there, it could plug up this whole runnel,” said Faraone Coccia, glancing down to point out a fiddler crab fumbling its way along the channel with its unbalanced claws.

With each shovel-full, the flow of water grows incrementally stronger and piles of dislodged peat beside the runnels grow larger.

“That’s technically considered fill,” said Ferguson, tossing another glob of peat toward the pile beside her. “We actually leave the peat on the marsh and we create these small little islands.”

These islands are about a chunk of peat thick —some 6-12 inches, not too high, Ferguson said — but that small elevation rise “is like a mountain in a marsh.”

Ferguson fought to keep the peat in the marsh, acquiring additional permits from the Coastal Resources Management Council, DEM’s Office of Water Resources, and the Army Corps of Engineers. This microtopography is essential for a healthy marsh surface, she said.

“These areas will just be a little higher, and they might recolonize,” Ferguson said. “And when I say might — they do recolonize.”

Within one season, the islands will host new sprouts of cordgrass, or they’ll prove high and dry enough to support clusters of high marsh grasses. The clusters of high grass will make ideal nesting habitat for the saltmarsh sparrow.

As healthy salt marsh has waned, so has the population of the saltmarsh sparrow — a bird that makes its nest out of a cup of dense high marsh grasses. The nests are built to withstand the highest moon tides, created with a dome so “the eggs float, but they don’t float out of the nest,” Ferguson said. But the area here is flooding too frequently, contributing to nest failure.

“That’s why these little islands that we’re creating are really valuable habitat,” Ferguson said.

Wenley Ferguson is constantly looking for clues to what shaped the marsh seen today.

Old ways and leftover lines
The state of marshes today are the result of centuries of human development and marshland intervention. According to Ferguson, nearly every marsh in the country holds some sort of historical impact. They are in no way pristine.

“So many of them were manipulated in this area for agricultural activity. And then in more recent years, we put roads along them,” Ferguson said. “We culverted them. We created duck habitat and impounded them. We filled them.”

From the 1700s to the 1900s, about 50 percent of marshes in the region were filled, according to Ferguson. Agricultural embankments have manipulated the marsh surface too, dating back to about the 1600s, when people started haying in these areas.

“The fresher the marsh grasses, the fresher the water table, the greater the value of the hay,” she said.

When she digs these runnels, Ferguson is always scouting for clues to what shaped the marsh seen today. A shovel full of root matter means a stagnant pool was once a field. Water pooling along straight lines could be a sign of an old embankment. Long straight trenches are likely remnants of old mosquito ditches — once made to reduce mosquito breeding grounds but now speeding marshland erosion.

The marsh’s tired past — coupled with its location in an old river valley whose steep sides make marsh migration difficult — spell out a challenging future.

“That’s why what we’re doing today is trying to restore some health of the marsh … under current conditions,” Ferguson said, “but always looking at where the marsh wants to go.”

An excavator heads into a thicket of phragmites growing on the eastern edge of Sapowet Marsh.

The eastern blockade
“Be careful of your eyes walking through this,” said John Veale, habitat biologist with DEM’s Division of Fish and Wildlife, as he pushed away the sharp corners of dozens of broken phragmites. “It can be a little bit dangerous.”

In the past century, invasive phragmites species — few native phragmites remain — have taken advantage of weakened saltwater marsh ecosystems to rampage through North American. The eastern edge of Sapowet Marsh, tucked below Old Main Road and several DEM-owned cornfields, is no different.

In many ways, phragmites are the perfect storm. Their feathery seed heads catch the light beautifully, but they also catch the wind and spread like wildfire. Once the seeds take hold, the reeds grow so densely they all but eliminate animal habitat and outcompete native grasses.

On Sapowet Marsh, it serves as an impenetrable blockade to marsh migration. Only a few grapevines are brave enough to reach their tendrils into the thicket. For the marsh to move away from the encroaching seawater, the phragmites need to loosen their hold. But that’s a notoriously difficult task.

“There’s no way we could do it with a shovel,” Ferguson said. “I mean, it’s just so hard. It’s one thing a little patch of phragmites. It’s another thing when it’s head-high.”

Mowing and burning do little to control phragmites, and pulling them out by the roots quickly proves costly. But like the smooth cordgrass, it is vulnerable to salt water. If Ferguson can drain the pooling fresh water and facilitate tidal flow up into the phragmites, they might dissipate — and the native grasses might have a chance at survival.

“We’re not going to get rid of the phragmites, but we can reduce the height and vigor of the phrag by facilitating that freshwater drainage,” she said.

Ferguson is in the early stages of battle on this front, just figuring out the plan. The phragmites grow 10-12 feet high in places, obscuring the lay of the land.

“There’s enough water,” Ferguson said. “It’s coming from someplace. I just can’t figure out the drainage cause it’s too thick.”

She has called in the help of an excavator. Within a few hours, the machine has established a clearing in the reeds and deepened part of a natural creek. Once some of the standing fresh water drains it will be easier to gauge the direction of the water flow.

Ferguson and her team intend to elongate the creek and the old agricultural ditches — putting past mistakes to better use — but for now the plan is still in development. Better to move slowly than be patching more mistakes up in a hundred years.

“The deterioration along the marsh edge is pretty remarkable, in a terrifying sort of way in my mind,” said Ferguson, pausing to point out a flock of buffleheads skimming into the water. “So that’s why we want to be really cautious on not making new openings for that erosion to expand upon.”

Caitlin Faulds is an ecoRI News journalist.

Caitlin Faulds: Trying to keep climate change from turning more toxic at N.E. waste sites

Providence County, in Rhode Island, and Suffolk County, in Massachusetts, are two of the most at-risk counties in New England from pollution buried at toxic sites.

— Conservation Law Foundation map

From ecoRI News (ecori.org)

Hazardous-waste sites and chemical facilities pockmark New England, leftovers of the region’s industrial past. And little action is being taken to prevent climate change from affecting these sites and cooking up a toxic future, according to analysts at the Conservation Law Foundation (CLF).

A regional report by CLF Massachusetts released this fall combined projections of climate risk with data on social vulnerability and hazardous- waste sites to build a comprehensive map of anticipated toxic-pollution risk from Connecticut to Maine. The results, which show that much of New England could face compounding threats, are startling — even to the mapmakers.

“I bought a house like six months ago … and was actually surprised by the number ... of [Superfund] sites that are in such close proximity to residential neighborhoods,” said Deanna Moran, CLF Massachusetts director of environmental planning. “It’s a little bit scary, but it’s a healthy amount of fear.”

In Rhode Island, Providence County was determined to be the county at highest risk, due to a combination of moderate wildfire risk, severe heat risk, high social vulnerability and 143 hazardous sites. Massachusetts’ s Suffolk County, which includes Boston, was deemed most at-risk in New England.

“A lot of people don’t realize how ubiquitous hazardous sites are, even Superfund sites are, throughout our region,” Moran said. “Even if a site is under remediation or fully remediated, those are the sites that we are still worried about because they were remediated without climate change at the forefront.”

The county-level analysis factors in risk associated with nearly 3,000 hazardous sites. These New England locations include landfills, Superfund sites, brownfields and 1,947 facilities across the region that generate large quantities of hazardous waste or are permitted for the treatment, storage or disposal of toxic chemicals. Many of these hazardous sites are aging, use failing technology, and/or do not have sufficient safeties in place to protect nearby communities in a warmer world, according to the CLF report.

“The techniques that we used to remediate those sites 20 years ago might not anticipate more extreme precipitation or flooding or heat,” Moran said, “and those are the ones that I think are really concerning ’cause they’re really not on the radar.”

Floods could damage infrastructure containing hazardous waste, trigger chemical fires, hinder technology monitoring toxic pollution, and create a toxic stew of floodwater and contaminants, according to the report. Rising temperatures could damage protective caps over contaminated properties and raise the toxicity level of some materials. Wildfires could ravage hazardous-waste sites, damaging protective infrastructure and releasing airborne contaminants.

The lineup of climate risks — which, according to CLF Massachusetts policy analyst Ali Hiple, were “weighted equally” in the report — paints a bleak scene of the region’s future, a future that has been glimpsed in isolated events across the country in recent years.

“Luckily, we have not seen that type of impact in the New England region yet, but we want to make sure that we’re being proactive now and not reactive later,” Moran said.

But despite knowing the dangers that climate poses, federal agencies “are not doing enough to address them, and that puts our communities in danger,” according to the CLF report. In 2019, a U.S. Government Accountability Office report suggested the Environmental Protection Agency should consider climate to ensure long-term Superfund site remediation and protection plans.

“We really just want to see the EPA really leading on this,” said Saranna Soroka, a legal fellow at CLF Massachusetts. “They’ve indicated they know the risk that climate change poses to these sites … but we want to see really consistent, really clear standards applied.”

Soroka noted that the federal agency could analyze climate impact as part of its existing Superfund-site review framework, which mandates site checks every five years. So far, climate analyses have not been incorporated, she said, despite EPA authority to do so.

“I think we’re well beyond the time of thinking through how we should be doing this,” Moran said. “We know the risks are real. In some cases, we’re already seeing them, and the time to be acting on them is now.”

Editor’s note: Here are links to EPA-designated Superfund sites in Rhode Island, Massachusetts, and Connecticut.

Caitlin Faulds is an ecoRI News journalist.

Todd McLeish: Small rodents play important roles in maintaining woodland ecosystems in N.E.

Female White-Footed mouse on sumac bush. 

— Photo by Peterwchen 

From ecoRI News (ecori.org)

When University of Rhode Island teaching professor Christian Floyd brought students in his mammalogy class to a nearby forest in September to set 50 box traps to capture mice and other small mammals, he was surprised the next morning when more than half of the traps contained a live white-footed mouse.

“I usually expect to catch three or four, and on a good year we’ll get about 12, but you never get 50 percent trap success,” URI’s rodent expert said. “White-Footed Mouse populations fluctuate in boom and bust years, and this year seems to be a boom year.”

Floyd speculated that abundant acorns, recent mild winters and healthy growth of concealing vegetation were probably factors in the unusual numbers of mice captured this year. But whatever the reason for their abundance, healthy mouse populations are a good sign for local forests.

A new study by scientists at the University of New Hampshire concluded that small mammals such as mice, voles, shrews and chipmunks play a vital role in keeping forests healthy by eating and dispersing the spores of mushrooms, truffles, and other fungi to new areas.

According to Ryan Stephens, the post-doctoral researcher at UNH who led the study, all trees form a mutually beneficial relationship with fungi. Healthy forests are dependent on hundreds of thousands of miles of fungal threads called hyphae that gather water and nutrients and supply it to the trees’ roots. In return, the trees provide the fungi with sugars they produce in their leaves. Without this symbiotic relationship, called mycorrhizae, forests would cease to exist as we know them.

Different fungal species enhance plant growth and fitness during different seasons and under different environmental conditions, so maintaining diverse fungal communities is vital for forest composition and drought resistance, according to Stephens.

But fungal diversity declines when trees die because of insect infestations, fires and timber harvests. That is why the role of small mammals in dispersing mushroom spores is so critical to forest ecology.

To effectively support healthy forests, Stephens said these animals must scatter spores of the right kind of fungi in sufficient quantities and to appropriate locations where tree seedlings are growing. But not every kind of small mammal disperses all kinds of spores, so it’s imperative that forest managers support a diversity of mammal species in forest ecosystems.

“By using management strategies that retain downed woody material and existing patches of vegetation, which are important habitat for small mammals, forest managers can help maintain small mammals as important dispersers of mycorrhizal fungi following timber harvesting” and other disturbances, Stephens said. “Ultimately, such practices may help maintain healthy regenerating forests.”

Distributing mushroom spores isn’t the only important role played by mice and voles in the forest environment. They are also tree planters.

“Almost all rodents cache food — they have a cache of acorns, seeds, maybe truffles, little bits of mushrooms,” Floyd said. “Our oak forests are probably all planted by rodents. They scurry around and dig holes and bury things.”

White-Footed Mice, which Floyd said are the most abundant mammal in Rhode Island, are also voracious consumers of the pupae of gypsy moths.

“For a mouse, gypsy moth pupae are like little jelly donuts; they’re a delicacy,” he said. “The theory is that when mouse numbers are high, they can regulate gypsy moth populations.”

Mice, voles, shrews and chipmunks are also the primary prey of most of the carnivores in the forest, from hawks and owls to foxes, weasels, fishers, and coyotes. These small mammals are a vital link in the food chain between the plant matter they eat and the larger animals that eat them.

Are these small mammals the most important players in maintaining healthy forests? Probably not. Floyd believes that accolade probably goes to the numerous invertebrates in the soil. But this new research on the dispersal of mushroom spores by mice and voles may move them up a notch in importance.

Todd McLeish is an ecoRI News contributor.

Todd McLeish: Weasels seem to be declining in New England and elsewhere in U.S.

The Long-Tailed Weasel seems to be the most common weasel in New England.

A Long-Tailed Weasel in winter coat

Via ecoRI News (ecori.org)

A national study of weasels from across much of the United States has revealed significant declines in all three species evaluated, which has a local biologist wondering about the status of the animals in Rhode Island.

The study by scientists in Georgia, North Carolina and New Mexico found an 87-94 percent decline in the number of least weasels, long-tailed weasels, and short-tailed weasels harvested annually by trappers over the past 60 years.

While a drop in the popularity of trapping and the low value of weasel pelts is partially to blame for the declining harvest, the researchers still detected a significant drop in the populations of all three species.

“Unless you maybe have chickens and you’re worried about a weasel eating your chickens, you probably don’t think about these species very often,” said Clemson University wildlife ecologist David Jachowski, who led the study. “Even the state agency biologists who are charged with tracking these animals really don’t have a good grasp on what is going on.”

The three weasel species are small nocturnal carnivores that feed primarily on mice, voles, shrews, and small birds, often by piercing their preys’ skull with their canine teeth. The weasels prefer dense brush and open woodland habitats, where they search for prey among stone walls, wood piles, and thickets. Because of their secretive nature and cryptic coloring, they are difficult to find and observe.

By assessing trapper data, museum collections, state statistics, a nationwide camera trapping effort, and observations reported on the internet portal iNaturalist, the scientists found the animals to be increasingly rare across most of their range.

“We have this alarming pattern across all these data sets of weasels being seen less and less,” Jachowski said. “They are most in decline at the southern edges of their ranges, especially the Southeast. Some areas like New York and the Canadian provinces can still have some dense pop ulations in localized areas.”

Jachowski noted weasel populations in southern New England are likely facing similar declines as the rest of the country. He believes, however, there is the potential for some areas of the Northeast to still have robust numbers of weasels, especially long-tailed weasels, which are considered the most common of the three species.

Charles Brown, a wildlife biologist at the Rhode Island Department of Environmental Management, who contributed data to the national study, said in his 20 years of monitoring mammal populations in the Ocean State, the only one of the three weasel species he has found is the long-tailed weasel.

“I’ve had a few infrequent encounters with them over the years and seen a few dead ones on the road,” he said. “A mammal survey done in the 1950s and early ’60s documented two short-tailed weasels, and those are the only records I’ve found for the species.”

Least weasels are not found within 300 miles of Rhode Island.

Brown has contributed 19 or 20 long-tailed weasel specimens to the Museum of Comparative Zoology at Harvard University over the years from many mainland communities, including Little Compton, East Providence, Warwick, and South Kingstown. Weasels are not known to inhabit any of the Narragansett Bay islands.

“It’s hard to say what their status is here,” he said. “Trappers might bring in one or two a year, and some years none, and we don’t have any other indexes to monitor them because they’re cryptic and we rarely see them.”

Brown said a monitoring program could be developed for weasels in the state using track surveys and camera traps, but because the animals have little economic value and do not cause significant damage, they have not been a priority to study.

“In a perfect world, I’d certainly like to try to find a specimen of a short-tailed weasel to see if they’re still around here, but I have nothing to go on about them from a historic perspective,” he said.

Data from the University of Rhode Island is helping to provide a current perspective of the species’ distribution. URI scientists recently concluded a five-year study of bobcats and the first year of a study of fishers, each using 100 trail cameras scattered throughout the state. Among the 850,000 images collected so far are about 150 photos of long-tailed weasels.

According to Amy Mayer, who is coordinating the studies, the weasel images were collected at numerous locations around the state, suggesting the population does not appear to be concentrated in any particular area of Rhode Island.

It is uncertain what could be causing the national decline in weasel numbers, though Jachowski and Brown believe the increasing use of rodenticides, which kill many weasel prey species, could be one factor. A recent study of fishers collected from remote areas of New Hampshire found the presence of rodenticides in the tissues of many of the animals.

“How it’s getting into the food chain in these remote areas, we don’t know,” Brown said. “There was some discussion that a lot of people go up there to summer camps, and when they close the camp up for the season, they bomb it with rodenticides to keep the mice out. That’s just speculation, but it makes sense.”

The decline of weasels may also have to do with changes to available habitat, the scientists said. The maturing of forests and decline of agricultural land has caused a reduction in the early successional habitats the animals prefer. Brown also believes the recovery of hawk and owl populations, which compete with weasels for mice and voles and which may occasionally kill a weasel, could also be a factor.

Jachowski said the findings from his national study have led to the formation of what he is calling a “weasel working group” to share data and discuss how to monitor the animals around the country. Brown is among the state biologists and academic researchers who are members of the group.

“We’re hoping the public will become involved, too, by reporting their sightings to iNaturalist,” Jachowski said. “We need to see where they persist, and then we can tease out what habitats they’re still in, what regions, and then do our studies to figure out what kind of management may be needed.”

Rhode Island resident and author Todd McLeish runs a wildlife blog.e

Todd McLeish: Some photographers are dangerously disturbing birds

From ecoRI News (ecori.org)

The increasing popularity of bird photography and the desire of photographers to showcase their images on social media is raising concerns that birds are being harassed and disturbed, leading to potentially harmful effects on their health.

Bird-conservation organizations around the globe, from the National Audubon Society to Britain’s Royal Society for the Preservation of Birds, are asking bird photographers to avoid getting too close and reminding the photographers of the codes of ethics that many wildlife photography organizations have established.

Local wildlife advocates have noted that it’s also an increasing problem in Rhode Island.

“It’s definitely a problem here, and it’s getting worse,” said one longtime birder who wished to remain anonymous for fear of reprisals. “There are more photographers, and there are more forums that photographers can post their photos on. It’s an ego trip for them. They want to post their photos and get likes, and that leads them to harass the birds.”

Laura Carberry, refuge manager at the Audubon Society of Rhode Island’s Fisherville Brook Wildlife Refuge, and Rachel Farrell, a member of the Rhode Island Avian Records Committee, said getting too close to wild birds can pose serious dangers to them. Birds see people as predators, and when people approach, the birds must stop feeding and instead exert extra energy they may not have to escape the area. They also may be forced to leave their nests unattended, making their eggs and chicks vulnerable to predation, thermal stress, or trampling.

When a rare European bird was discovered at Snake Den State Park, in Johnston, R.I., last year and birders and photographers flocked to the site to observe the visitor, some photographers chased the bird across a farmer’s fields to get better photographs. Birders say that is a common occurrence whenever rarities are discovered.

Owls are particularly sensitive to disturbance, Farrell said, and the managers of Swan Point Cemetery, in Providence, have resorted to putting yellow caution tape from tree to tree around an area where great horned owls have nested in recent years to keep photographers from going too close.

“I remember seeing a photographer banging a stick against the bottom of a tree to get an owl to come out of its hole,” Farrell said.

Other birders recalled when a photographer played a recording of a screech owl for so long that one of the nestlings almost fell out of the nest because it was so distressed by the recording.

According to Carberry, Audubon has occasionally had to close parts of its refuges when owl nests have been discovered because photographers go off trail and disturb habitats to approach the nest. The organization has asked birders not to report where owls are nesting until after the breeding season to reduce the problem.

“We often tell people that if the bird is looking at you, you’re too close,” she said.

It’s not just a problem with photographers, however. Some birdwatchers are also at fault for similar behaviors. Some will play audio recordings of bird songs to attract the birds out into the open, for example, a practice condemned by ornithologist Charles Clarkson, the director of avian research at the Audubon Society of Rhode Island.

“The daily energetic demands of birds are extremely high, even when they are not actively nesting,” he said. “Distracting birds from essential tasks — foraging, preening, defending territory — can leave them in an energy deficit, which is difficult to make up,” he said. “To lure birds in using taped calls can have serious negative consequences for individual birds and even local bird populations where taped calls are used regularly. It’s best to leave birds be and use your own power of observation to find as many as possible.”

How to resolve the problem is unclear. Enforcing codes of ethics is difficult, and speaking up sometimes results in abusive responses. The Atlantic Flyway Shorebird Initiative is surveying birders and bird photographers to assess the scale of the problem and to see if educational messaging and communication tools could be developed to address the issue.

“I think folks lose sight of what they may be doing to the species they are trying to get a glimpse of or take a photo of,” Carberry said. “They should always think of the bird first and think if they are impacting it in any way. I think that if they put the birds’ needs first, they would be more careful about approaching a nest or getting a little too close.”

Rhode Island resident and author Todd McLeish runs a wildlife blog.

Todd McLeish: Artificial light threatens animal populations

Light pollution is mostly unpolarized, and its addition to moonlight results in a decreased polarization signal.

From ecoRI News (ecori.org)

Global insect populations have declined by as much as 75 percent during the past 50 years, according to scientists, potentially leading to catastrophic impacts on wildlife, the environment and human health. Most studies point to habitat loss, climate change, industrial farming and pesticide use as the main factors driving the loss of insects, but a new study in the United Kingdom points to another cause: light pollution.

The ever-increasing glow of artificial light from street lights, especially LED lights, was found to have detrimental effects on the behavior of moths, resulting in a reduction in caterpillar numbers by half. And since birds and other wildlife rely on caterpillars as an important food source, the consequences of this decline could be devastating.

According to Douglas Boyes of the British Center for Ecology & Hydrology, street lights cause nocturnal moths to postpone laying their eggs while also making the insects more visible to predators such as bats. In addition, caterpillars that hatch near artificial light exhibit abnormal feeding behavior.

But moths are not the only wildlife affected by artificial light.

Since most songbirds migrate at night, birds that have evolved to use the moon and stars as navigational tools during migration often become disoriented when flying over a landscape illuminated with artificial light.

“City centers that are very bright at night can act as attractants to migrating birds,” said ornithologist Charles Clarkson, director of avian research at the Audubon Society of Rhode Island. “They get pulled toward cities, and when they find themselves amid heavily lit buildings, they become disoriented, leading to a large number of window strikes and increased mortality.”

It is unclear why birds are attracted to lights, but studies have found increasing densities of migrating birds the closer one gets to cities.

“Birds probably see these cities on the horizon from a long distance, and they get pulled toward these locations en masse,” Clarkson said.

Street lights have also been found to be problematic to birds. Birds are active later into the evening when they are exposed to nearby artificial lighting at night, and they often sing later as well.

“Sometimes that might lead to more food availability, since lights attract insects,” Clarkson said. “But it also affects the physiology of the birds when they’re active when they should be sleeping. Some birds that live in heavily lit urban or suburban areas begin nesting earlier, too, up to a month earlier than they typically would. And that leads to a phenological mismatch between when food is traditionally available and when the chicks are hatching and need to be fed.”

Artificial lighting may cause other species to face a similar mismatch. Christopher Thawley, a lecturer and researcher in the Department of Biological Sciences at the University of Rhode Island, studied lizards in Florida and found not only that the reptiles advanced the onset of breeding when exposed to artificial light, but they also laid more eggs and even grew larger under artificial lighting conditions. Other kinds of wildlife could have comparable results.

“Light at night can sometimes mimic a longer day length, and a lot of animals use length of day as a cue for when to start breeding,” he said. “If they’re exposed to light at night, they think the days are longer so it must be time to breed. Length of daylight is also a good cue for when to migrate or when to start calling, and that could potentially be an issue for some species.”

Thawley said frogs that call at night near artificial light could be more vulnerable to predators.

“When nights are darker, frogs call more, and when the moon is bright they call less,” he said. “It’s more dangerous to call during a full moon because predators could see you. That would be especially true under artificial lighting conditions, too.”

Scientists are still trying to understand the intricacies of how light pollution impacts wildlife, and yet some cities are already taking action to reduce its impact. Dozens of cities around the United States and Canada, including Boston, New York, Chicago and Washington, D.C., have launched “lights out” programs aimed at dimming city lights during the peak of bird migration.

Providence is not among the cities participating in a “lights out” program, but local advocates have discussed how to get it started for several years. They say it would be a positive first step toward reducing the impact of artificial lighting on local and migrating wildlife.

Rhode Island resident and author Todd McLeish runs a wildlife blog and frequently writes for ecoRI News.

Caitlin Faulds: How do users interpret warnings about coastal water quality?

Misquamicut Beach, in southern Rhode Island

From ecoRI News (ecori.org)

A new study on perceptions of coastal water quality shows users may have more difficulty interpreting warning signs than previously thought.

The University of Rhode Island study, recently published in the Marine Pollution Bulletin, surveyed more than 600 recreational users around Narragansett Bay regarding their understanding of water quality to find that water quality had “multiple meanings.” A complicated conceptualization of water quality could have big implications for water policy and management.

“Water quality is pretty complex for people,” said Tracey Dalton, a URI marine affairs professor and Rhode Island Sea Grant director, who co-authored the study. “It’s not as simple as the chemical components that we tend to manage for.”

Water quality managers typically look at a variety of biochemical and physical indicators, including nutrients, temperature, acidity, oxygen levels, phytoplankton, fecal coliform and enterococci, to see if a site meets surface water quality guidelines set by the Environmental Protection Agency and outlined in the Clean Water Act.

But, according to the recent study led by URI marine affairs doctoral candidate Ken Hamel, these indicators can be difficult to understand for beachgoers, who more commonly tote sunscreen and beach towels than sterile sample bottles, plankton nets or conductivity, temperature and depth (CTD) sensors.

With help from his research team, Hamel conducted hundreds of in-person surveys at 19 sites along the Rhode Island shoreline. They asked recreational users to grade water quality in the area on a scale from 1 to 10, and then explain the reasons for their score.

Users generally perceived water quality in upper Narragansett Bay to be worse than in the lower bay. This assessment aligned fairly well with biochemical reports in the area, Hamel said, generally cleaner on the southern, open end of the bay than in the more urban, post-industrial north.

“You’ve got to wonder … how do people make that judgment,” he said. “Because they don’t necessarily know how much sewage effluence is in the water. They can’t see E. coli or enterococcus. They can’t smell it. Nutrients are also invisible.”

After a statistical analysis of the responses, the survey showed nearly 23 percent of users based water quality determinations on the presence of macroalgae or seaweed.

“Seaweed, which is a perfectly ecologically healthy organism for the most part — people perceive that as a water quality problem,” Hamel said. “From a Clean Water Act perspective, [seaweed in] the north is a water quality problem, the south is not.”

In the northern reaches of Narragansett Bay, macroalgal concentrations are often the result of nutrient overload, especially nitrogen and phosphorous borne of fertilizers and road runoff. It can indicate a problem with marine water quality.

But further south, macroalgae are less associated with pollution and are not necessarily an indicator of nutrient enrichment or water degradation, according to Hamel. Seaweed grows in reefs off the coast, breaks up due to wave action and can be blown on shore, especially on south-facing sands.

With no simple association between water degradation and seaweed, Hamel was surprised to see so many people use it as a basis for water quality determinations.

“There is very little research on perceptions of algae or seaweed period,” Hamel said. “It’s just a very understudied subject.”

Shoreline trash, “broadly defined” pollution, strong odor, water clarity, swimming prohibitions and nearby sewage treatment plants were also cited by beachgoers as indicators of poor water quality.

“People figured if there was a sewage plant nearby the water must be dirty,” Hamel said. “Although if you think about it, it’s slightly backward right. That should make the water a little bit cleaner.”

Another 9 percent of respondents also indicated that firmly held place beliefs played a role in water quality grades. These place beliefs, Hamel said, were “hard to pin down,” but were based primarily on the reputation of a place, whether linked to former industry or long-embedded regional knowledge of Narragansett Bay.

“One person even said, ‘This place is too upper bay.’ Like it was just common sense for them that water in the upper bay must be bad,” Hamel said.

Narragansett Bay visitors with water-quality questions can find detailed reports for sites through the Rhode Island Department of Environmental Management and through the Narragansett Bay Commission. But, according to Hamel, the survey shows a need and opportunity to better engage beachgoers in water quality education, so the average recreation user can more accurately read the warnings presented in an environment.

“As a group of social scientists, we’re really interested in understanding how people are connected to their environment,” Dalton said. “From a policy perspective, it's really important to understand what the general public thinks since they’re the ones who are going to coastal sites, they’re the ones affected by policies.”

The Clean Water Act, Hamel said, has gaps in the way it was written and interpreted by water managers. As set out in 1972, the federal law mandated that states reduce and eliminate pollutants primarily to protect wildlife and recreation. Nicknamed the “fishable/swimmable goal,” the law gives priority to recreational users.

The law is enforced at the state level, with slight variations in procedure, though it typically takes the form of measuring and monitoring biochemical and physical variables. But, according to Hamel, that strategy can leave out certain stakeholders and minimize non-user concerns.

“There’s a lot of other people that use the water that aren’t necessarily in it or on it,” he said. “And their … perspectives aren’t really considered by the way the Clean Water Act is implemented.”

There isn’t necessarily anything wrong with the law, Hamel said, and it has been instrumental in improving water quality. But policymakers and managers could better address all stakeholders and “more explicitly consider” the needs of non-users, he said, including those who may work or live nearby.

“In terms of how we direct our investments and direct our funds, we want to make sure that we’re also addressing what people care about,” Dalton said. “It’s really important to ground that in what the understanding is of the concept of water quality.”

Caitlin Faulds is an ecoRI News journalist.

Todd McLeish: Strengthening plant and animal diversity by planting native plants

Purple coneflowers, a native plant, on a ‘‘pollinator pathway’’ that helps boost populations of wide range of wildlife.

—Photo by Frank Carini/ecoRI News)

From ecoRI News (ecori.org)

Rhode Island gardeners in Cranston and Barrington are joining a national effort to install native plants in their gardens. The idea behind the effort is to link their yards with native habitat on protected lands and create what organizers are calling “pollinator pathways” to boost populations of bees, butterflies, birds and other wildlife.

In the Edgewood section of Cranston, Suzanne Borstein is leading the effort to get her neighbors and friends to plant native plants in what she calls the “tree lawn” — the area between the sidewalk and the road. Since last November, she has hosted a series of online meetings to discuss the initiative, and nearly three dozen Cranston households had agreed to participate by the beginning of May, with more signing on every week.

“The connectability of the garden spaces is what’s especially important,” Borstein said. “If you have a great yard but nobody else in the neighborhood does, then the pollinators won’t be attracted or sustained.”

Planting native plants and restoring native habitat is vital to preserving biodiversity, according to the National Audubon Society. The habitat created by native plant gardens helps to nurture and sustain insects, birds and other creatures.

The idea for the Pollinator Pathways program emerged from a popular book written by University of Delaware entomologist Doug Tallamy called Bringing Nature Home. According to Borstein, Tallamy’s idea was to get people to replace half of their lawns with native plants that would support native insect populations, which in turn support bird populations. If enough people participated, the pollinator pathways would link properties that, when combined, would total more acreage than all of the country’s national parks.

Borstein, a clinical psychologist, said the goal of her effort is to “raise awareness of the importance of choosing native plants. I’m making it as local as I can so we can build community, neighbor to neighbor. I want to increase the availability and use of native plants.”

But where to buy native plants for local use is a considerable problem.

“There’s a new awakening that we should plant natives, but native plants are hard to find,” said Sally Johnson, vice president of the Rhode Island Wild Plant Society board of directors. “I don’t think the commercial market has responded yet to the need.”

The Rhody Native program, launched by the Rhode Island Natural History Survey in 2009, was initially successful at growing native plants from seeds collected locally, but it couldn’t be sustained by a nonprofit with limited staff and funding.

When Borstein contacted Johnson for help in sourcing native plants for her Edgewood gardeners, Johnson eventually identified about 10 native plant species that could be acquired from a commercial nursery in New Jersey.

“It’s called the Garden State for a reason,” Johnson said.

The Barrington Land Conservation Trust is also finding it difficult to find native plants for participants in its pollinator effort.

“Many local nurseries carry plants listed as native, but native to where? New England? The Midwest? Are they true natives or cultivars?” asked Cindy Pierce, one of the organizers of the Barrington project. “It can be daunting for a new gardener or even an experienced gardener new to natives.”

Pierce noted Blue Moon Farm Perennials, in South Kingstown, R.I., specializes in native plants, but the Barrington group is also working with the Rhode Island Wild Plant Society to acquire native plants. The Land Conservation Trust is also asking local nurseries to stock natives, and it plans to hold its own native plant sale in the fall.

The Barrington gardeners aren’t just focusing their efforts on planting natives in the tree lawn, however. They are instead encouraging their neighbors to take whatever steps they can to diversify their gardens with native plants.

“Whether it’s adding a few container plants, adding native plants to an existing garden, or creating a meadow,” Pierce said. “Eliminating the use of fertilizers and lawn chemicals is another important step everyone can take, along with reducing the size of your lawn, mowing less often and leaving the leaves in your garden. Every little bit helps.”

Assuming that interest in native plants and the Pollinator Pathways program continues to build, organizers in Barrington and Cranston hope additional communities will join and extend the corridors being built for pollinators. Those that add native plants to their gardens can add their properties to an online map of native plant gardens called Homegrown National Parks that author Tallamy has established.

“Even if you only have three feet of natives, you can get on the map and it hooks you up to a lot of resources,” Borstein said.

After the planting season, Borstein hopes to organize a neighborhood walk so residents can “see what’s possible.” She hopes such an event will lead to additional participants and further discussions about expanding the project.

“I don’t have anything formal planned, but I’d like to create some way that all of the other organizations in Rhode Island could communicate to share information,” Borstein said. “And I’d like to see it grow beyond pollinators and help people to understand the role of shrubs and trees as well. It will help gardeners understand more about the issues from a holistic point of view.”

Todd McLeish is a nature writer and ecoRI News contributor.

Tim Faulkner: Offshore wind and energy justice

Global cumulative offshore wind-power capacity in megawatts
Sources: GWEC (2011–2020)[9][10][11][12][13][14] and EWEA (1998–2010)

From ecoRI News (ecori.org)

The recent announcement by Ørsted and Eversource to invest $24 million in an assembly facility at the Port of Providence is a shot in the arm for local jobs and sign of the financial tidal wave flowing into the offshore wind industry.

The infrastructure pledge is part of $40 million the energy companies plan to spend on ProvPort and the Quonset Business Park in North Kingstown, R.I. The facilities will create at least 40 jobs and support construction for the Revolution Wind and South Fork Wind offshore facilities. Quonset, with a federally funded pier expansion, will host a boat building company with plans to make two crew-transport vessels, and serve as the transmission cable landing for at least two offshore wind projects.

A third facility, at the State Pier in New London, Conn., will receive an additional $77.5 million from Ørsted and Eversource to build a deep-water cargo port. The pier project creates 460 construction jobs and offers faster access to the Revolution and South Fork wind facilities and a third Ørsted/Eversource project, Sunrise Wind.

Lured by generous subsidies and billions from power-purchase contracts, international utilities and even major fossil-fuel extractors are surging into the region to embrace the advancing renewable-energy boom. The United States currently has more than 29,000 megawatts of offshore wind procurement targets.

In the next five years alone, offshore wind developers plan to bring online 9,100 megawatts from 13 offshore wind projects.

A pro-wind administration and new federal incentives are stoking the growth. The December 2020 federal stimulus package included a new 30 percent tax credit for offshore wind projects. In March, the Biden administration sweetened investments for offshore wind development by opening a new lease area off New York and New Jersey. There’s $3 billion for new loans, and funds for more port construction, and research and development.

Developers such as Ørsted and Vineyard Wind aren’t spending for free. Fueled by long-term contacts and sales of renewable-energy credits, both paid by ratepayers, developers and financial institutions like JPMorgan Chase and Goldman Sachs stand to make many times what is being spent on port development and infrastructure investments.

Ørsted, the world’s largest offshore wind developer, is looking at an estimated $3.2 billion in revenue from the power-purchase agreement for Revolution Wind alone.

While they fight for the right to continue to belch out greenhouse-gas emissions, fossil-fuel behemoths are also becoming interested in renewable energy. Big banks are financing projects on both sides. (istock)

Fossil-fuel fingerprints on renewables
Drawn by lucrative fixed-pricing contracts that guarantee a revenue stream, oil and gas developers and bankers are profiting from the response to a problem they had a hand in creating. Fossil-fuel giants such as Chevron and Royal Dutch Shell are embracing offshore wind as new players in the growing sector.

“Every barrel of oil and every watt of electricity that the women and men of the U.S. offshore sector produce is energy that our nation does [not] have to import from state-backed producers in pollution havens such as Russia or China,” according to Erik Milito, president of the lobbying firm National Ocean Industries Association, whose members in the convoluted energy sector include ExxonMobil, Halliburton, ocean rare earth mineral miners, and Ørsted.

Many of the big banks financing these projects, such as JPMorgan Chase, Citi, and Bank of America, are still funding fossil-fuel development. Chase, the top lender, has financed $317 billion for fossil-fuel ventures since the Paris Agreement was signed in 2016. Some like ExxonMobil and Shell are facing legal battles for climate denial and for failing to protect their behemoth waterfront oil and gas terminals from the climate crisis.

But Ørsted, previously named Danish Oil and Natural Gas, was a full-fledged fossil-fuel extraction and distribution company that owned oil, gas, and coal power plants. In 2009, the company publicly pledged to transition to offshore wind and is now leading the offshore “green revolution.”

Although Copenhagen was the site of the United Nations’ climate conference that year, public pressure had little to do with the multinational’s transition to renewable energy. According to the online magazine Corporate Knights, Ørsted’s shift to wind was mostly made in reaction to declining revenue, as fossil-fuel profits dropped and the costs to build renewables declined. Ørsted’s stock price and growing earnings reflect the fiscal gains of that decision, serving as a nautical map to offshore wind for other utilities to follow.

While 90 percent of public testimony delivered in Massachusetts legislative committees on energy and climate change favor climate and renewable-energy bills, special interests push back hard. (Climate Social Science Network)

Financial gains flow away

Like most privately owned U.S. utilities, National Grid and Eversource are keeping stakes in fossil fuels. The companies still own natural-gas infrastructure and distribution networks. Eversource, however, appears to be following in Ørsted’s footsteps by branching out into offshore wind generation.

In 2019, the Hartford-based utility bought a 50 percent stake in Revolution Wind and South Fork Wind, plus joint ownership of a lease of a 300-square-mile ocean wind area.

National Grid isn’t staying on the renewable-energy sideline. The United Kingdom-based utility is building and profiting from undersea transmission cables for the Revolution Wind project. The utility is writing the request for proposal (RFP) for another 600 megawatts of offshore wind power for Rhode Island, a project the utility stands to profit from.

Meanwhile, at statehouses across the country, private utilities lobby against environmental legislation, especially solar bills that benefit decentralized ownership.

According to a recent report by the Brown University-based Climate Social Science Network, the two primary utilities in Massachusetts, National Grid and Eversource, often sided with real-estate and fossil-fuel organizations by opposing legislation that addresses the climate crisis, while supporting bills that promote imported, large-scale hydropower and local offshore wind energy.

“These projects would result in substantial contracts for the state’s largest utilities,” according to the 36-page report. “Conversely, solar electricity is often decentralized on residential and commercial rooftops and therefore ‘behind the meter,’ meaning it cuts into electric utilities’ revenues.”

In recent years, National Grid has resisted moratoriums on natural-gas connections and locked out union workers over contract disputes.

In a new scandal, Rhode Island’s main gas and electric utility is being accused of reaping millions from an excessive surcharge related to its undersea cable for the Block Island Wind Farm. The discovery prompted Rhode Island Public Utilities Commission (PUC) chairman Ronald Gerwatowski, during a recent PUC meeting, to declare, “they’re making so much money on this that it’s ridiculous. … The company should be ashamed of itself.” (His comments start at about the 1:54 mark.)

While benefits like port development, fisheries research, and engineering and construction jobs are significant to Rhode Island and the region, they pale compared to the billions heading to investors.

The revenue streams are complicated, but a major slice of the financial gains are flowing out of state to foreign-owned banks and energy institutions such as National Grid, Ørsted, and their shareholders. Vineyard Wind is co-owned by a Danish investment firm and Iberdrola, a Spanish multinational utility that also owns coal power plants.

The 804-megawatt Mayflower Wind offshore project slated for be built south of Martha’s Vineyard is owned by Shell and EDP Renewables, a subsidiary of Lisbon-based Energias de Portugal.

Energy democracy is a political, economic, social, and cultural concept that merges energy transition with democracy and public participation.

Push for energy democracy

The hypocrisy, conflicts of interest, profiteering, and equity concerns have prompted a simmering debate about the role of energy in society. Questions are being raised about how electricity is produced and delivered, owned, and funded.

Some see access to renewable, affordable energy as a right and are pushing for decentralizing and socializing the system to advance environmental-justice issues and create a low-carbon transition that is influenced by energy democracy or energy justice rather than shareholder earnings.

Since ratepayers and taxpayers are funding the transition to offshore wind, why can’t those profits and decisions about what they fund stay local?

Christian Roselund, a Providence-based energy writer and activist, sees the winter power outage in Texas as another example of the flaws of a deregulated system that treats electricity as a commodity and fails to act in the interest of ratepayers.

“We’ve created a monster here,” Roselund said of private utilities. “We’ve given them all this power, and when we realize it needs to be tweaked they stop that from happening because it’s a good deal for their shareholders. The utility and the shareholders don’t want this to change, and we’ve failed as a society to address that.”

Roselund, who is a member of the Providence DSA (Democratic Socialists of America) National Grid working group, and other progressive thinkers are making the case for a different model — one that approaches electricity as a human right and offers access while keeping a stable supply. Proponents of such a system suggest the revenue be redirected from out-of-state investors and multinational corporations to local organizations by using publicly owned power authorities and financial institutions.

The concept isn’t new. Public utilities created though the Rural Electrification Administration in the 1930s were used to bring power to areas deemed unprofitable by private power companies.

Government-owned utilities such as the Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA) became potent tools for energy democracy by offering affordable electricity to poverty-stricken rural regions.

This model is being revisited as a federal, regional, or state entity with resources to expand development into large-scale renewable projects and usher in the electrification of the transportation and heating sectors. A Green TVA concept operates as a federally owned corporation or group of organizations that prioritize equity while having the fiscal backing to raise substantial sums of money to finance large energy projects such as offshore wind facilities.

The TVA is currently restricted to Tennessee and parts of six neighboring states. But one proposal suggests allowing TVA to expand its reach and install solar, wind, hydro, and even nuclear generators across the country. Power could then be sold wholesale to local power companies outside of the TVA’s jurisdiction.

As public utilities, ratepayers own the projects and as shareholders they benefit from the savings and influence policymaking. Public utilities are far from perfect and are often criticized for failing to acknowledge public demands.

Roselund said there needs to be structural changes so that public utilities are truly responsive to the public and committed to transparent democracy.

But the vision of large, centralized public utilities producing and distributing low-carbon power is gaining support for matching the scale needed to develop offshore wind.

“Because it is a federally owned corporation, it can be used directly by the government to achieve energy transition goals,” according to the People’s Policy Project. “This differs from other approaches that rely upon subsidies and mandates to indirectly modify private sector behavior.”

While some municipal and state utilities have mixed results, other models are being proposed. Maine, for instance, is considering starting a nonprofit, consumer-owned utility.

Federal utilities have also been operating for decades in Germany and Denmark. In fact, the Danish government is Ørsted’s majority owner.

Cooperatives, community choice aggregation, and shared distributed generation are flourishing in states that allow them, especially for solar electricity. (istock)

Cooperative models embraced

While the United States and England have shifted to the private-ownership model, public and cooperative entities are being embraced in some regions to democratize renewable energy, especially for land-based projects such as solar.

Cooperatives, community choice aggregation (CCA), and shared distributed generation are flourishing in states that allow them, especially for solar projects. These projects include a consumer-owned power co-ops in New York City, Massachusetts, and Vermont. The Cape Light Compact on Cape Cod is a joint power collective that aggregates municipal electricity purchases for 21 municipalities. It offers discounted rates, consumer protections, and aid for low-income residents.

Public banks, such as the state-owned Bank of North Dakota, are popular institutions. The much-maligned and misrepresented Green New Deal promotes the creation of public banks, because these member-focused institutions could be asked to finance all or portions of large renewable-energy projects while offering other benefits to taxpayers. As consumer-owned entities, they can direct the social benefits to frontline communities, unlike private companies that must balance equity initiatives with maintaining profits.

Former Rhode Island secretary of state Matt Brown offered a pubic energy plan with a focus on a public bank during his 2018 campaign for governor.

The current offshore wind model, he said, follows the same system of financing that requires residents to spend some $3.6 billion, or about $3,400 per person, to buy imported fossil fuels each year.

“We have to make sure all of the profits for this new energy don’t go to hedge funds and big banks and Wall Street investors,” Brown said. “It ought to be shared by the public. The sun and the water and the wind shouldn’t be owned by any corporations. The people should benefit from the use of these resources.”

He proposed that Rhode Island run its own energy system that meets state energy needs by 2035. As a state energy system, each resident would have a say in decision-making and receive an annual rebate check, much like the Alaska Permanent Fund Corporation, which shares royalties from fossil-fuel extraction with residents.

“My plan gives the state and all Rhode Islanders an actual financial stake in this new energy system,“ Brown said.

As a public bank, public utility, or cooperative, Brown noted that the entity would offer greater transparency, accountability, and participation in decisions about energy use and equity.

John Farrell, director of the Energy Democracy Initiative, has also suggested expanding a publicly owned bank or utility to participate in the ownership of a project.

“The license of fossil-fuel companies and utilities to pollute without consequences caused the climate threat,” he said.

The solution, he said, is to reduce the power of monopoly corporations. In the energy sector, that means prioritizing distributed power.

Multiple cooperatives or even a number of publicly owned utilities could combine their financial clout to buy into offshore wind, perhaps through ownership of turbines or joining into power-purchase agreements. Financial risk can be reduced through federal backing.

Farrell suggested that a group of 20 or so cooperatively owned or publicly owned utilities could band together to take ownership and invest in an offshore wind facility.

The federal government could also build offshore wind facilities, much as they did with large dams between the 1930s and ’60s through the Western Area Power Administration, a federal entity that operates hydroelectric dams and delivers electricity to more then 40 million customers. A power administrator like this could sell energy to utilities with a preference given to municipal and energy cooperatives.

Farrell said these projects would help the United States catch up with Europe’s more developed offshore industry by growing an offshore wind workforce and building local expertise. He also noted that a public system could set standards for hiring U.S. firms and set procurement rules for hiring women and minorities to ensure equitable access to the workforce.

“In some ways it would make a lot of sense because the technology and the know-how are out there internationally,” Farrell said. “But we need to build up our domestic capabilities, especially in terms of construction experience. The federal government could also drive a lot of useful domestic economic agenda with that by saying we’re going to hire American firms to do the work, we’re going to hire American workers and make sure there is equitable access to the workforce.

“I think that’s an intriguing approach in terms of the offshore wind resources given that we have so much of it that’s untapped at this point.”

Community choice gathers momentum

Germany has had success with its procurement compensation rules that encourage the development of community ownership and cooperatives. As a result, nearly half of 70 gigawatts of solar development are owned by solar cooperatives.

Legal structures and tax incentives would need to be changed to encourage the expansion of cooperatives in the United States.

Farrell advocates for CCAs, which allow cities and towns to buy power on behalf of their residents, businesses, and municipal customers from an alternative supplier. Rhode Island and Massachusetts are two of nine states that allow community choice aggregation.

The CCA concept could be expand to allow offshore wind developers to sell a portion of a facility to a cooperative or a collective of CCAs. Or much like the auto bailout in 2008, the government could take an equity stake in an offshore wind project and have an increased say in the procurement. Or a federal entity could use its purchasing power to buy offshore wind power at a price premium and direct revenue to address issues of public interest.

Farrell supports a plan that democratizes the energy system by bringing solar to 30 million households. Such a program would create millions of jobs, reduce energy bills, grow wealth, and lessen reliance on monopolistic utilities for essential electricity services.

The goal of such a proposal, he said, is to “shrink the economic and political power of investor-owned utility companies, so that people and the planet come before shareholder returns.”

There isn’t much appetite for public ownership among state energy officials.

The Rhode Island Office of Energy Resources (OER) balked at engaging the notion of public energy ownership. The agency is reluctant to discuss social-justice strategy and quickly slams the door when it comes to tilting the model toward citizen ownership.

“We have no further comment at this time,” OER spokesperson Robert Beadle said when asked about the concepts of keeping revenue and decision-making local through public ownership of offshore wind.

In a subsequent email, Beadle noted that project financing is a critical component of advancing a proposed renewable-energy project, particularly those at scale. He said current practices leave equity decisions to the developer.

“We note that the broader issue you raise is indeed a very important one,” Beadle wrote. “Through the EC4 [Executive Climate Change Coordinating Council], OER and other state agencies are working to advance a coordinated climate justice approach to our shared work, emphasizing equity and access for all Rhode Islanders.”

The Massachusetts Clean Energy Center (MassCEC), a quasi-public economic development agency focused on renewable energy, shunned repeated requests for comment on energy democracy.

In an Earth Day opinion piece, MassCEC CEO Stephen Pike praised the Mayflower Wind and Vineyard Wind projects for funding job-training programs and called for greater direct spending for environmental-justice communities. But there is no mention of making the existing energy structure, and offshore wind, more democratic.

Corporate-funded advocacy groups such as Boston-based Ceres call for modest changes to the existing structures, such as asking established financial firms to disclose climate-impact risks, broaden racial discussions, and “strengthen financial regulator coordination globally.”

Offshore wind expert Willett Kempton, a professor at the University of Delaware, has said local banks aren’t equipped to manage the kind of sophisticated financial instruments used to fund billion-dollar energy projects. These mechanisms regularly include structured financing bond deals that are unlike traditional lending.

Kempton has suggested that social issues such as equity and environmental justice be addressed by states through RFPs for offshore wind power-purchase contracts.

Other energy experts note this concept in a recent RFP in Massachusetts that requires bidders to address hiring and training minority groups, women, veterans, LGBT, and persons with disabilities. The RFP says projects must create a supply chain that gives preference to underserved communities. Developers also are mandated to track the environmental and socioeconomic impacts on environmental-justice communities.

Local opportunities are here

Michael Goodman, professor of public policy and acting provost at the University of Massachusetts at Dartmouth, said southeastern New England should position itself as a hub for operation and maintenance that serves as a center in the global supply chain for offshore wind.

Danish developers and the offshore extraction industry already have the financial partners and experience to build large energy projects, while states and utilities are lining up to buy the power.

“So I think the real way to democratize the impacts of this industry is to do what we need to do to attract as much of that supply chain investment and business location as we can,” Goodman said. “That will allow us to have an inside track on what’s expected to be a very significant and new industry in the United States.”

He noted that the region is market-ready for the wind industry, and Massachusetts and Rhode Island are “well positioned to capture their disproportionate fair share of those benefits if we play our cards right.”

Playing the right cards includes building a trained workforce and offering incentives for developers to partner with local businesses. Goodman said there’s also an opportunity for cross-boarder collaboration between states in New England.

“I think there is much more bang for the public buck focusing on capturing the benefits of the emergence of the industry than there is trying to develop alternative sources of financing,” Goodman said.

But there may be some middle ground.

Brown said energy transition is not an all-or-none, public-private paradigm.

“There can be private investment,” Brown said. “All I’m saying is the public should get something, not nothing.”

“There’s an opportunity here,” Roselund said. “We’re going to have this energy transition once. It’s a more-just political economy of energy where people benefit not just big corporations.”

Creating a new utility, power cooperatives, and/or banking entity will require legislation and plenty of political will and public support.

“We just don’t have that culture of many of these European nations but we have a lot to learn from them,” Roselund said. “I think there is more interest in doing this, and it’s just a matter of taking the next step.”

Both sides of the public-private divide say now is the time to act.

“This is the moment,” Brown said. “Will people get some of it, or will corporations and hedge funds and banks get all of it? It’s the least we can do, we just need different politicians.”

Jobs and economic and environmental benefits seem assured, and overtures to environmental-justice communities are underway. But with a major energy transformation in motion and vast public resource at stake, the concept of energy justice appears to be an afterthought.

“Government should find a way so that the public finds a stake in the renewable-energy economy,” Brown said. “It’s absolutely possible. It’s just a question of political will and standing up to corporate power and corporate money.”

Journalist Tim Faulkner is a contributor to ecoRI News.

Frank Carini: The vast poisoning that goes with maintaining lawns

From ecoRI News (ecori.org)

The amount of pollution, from noise to air to water, created to maintain green carpets and immaculate yards is jarring. Lawn mowers, weed whackers, leaf blowers, pesticides, herbicides, fungicides and fertilizers. Much of this effort is powered by or made from fossil fuels.

Lawn-care equipment is typically powered by two-stroke engines. They are cheap, compact, lightweight, and simple. They are also highly polluting, generating up to 5 percent of the country’s air pollution, according to the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA).

Each weekend for much of the year, according to estimates, some 54 million Americans mow their lawns. All this weekend grass cutting uses some 800 million gallons of gasoline annually. That doesn’t include the gas used to trim around trees and fences and to blow grass clippings around.

Those 800 million gallons also don’t include the gas used for lawns mowed during the week or by landscaping companies. It doesn’t include the oil that is also burned by these cheap engines. It doesn’t include grass cut on golf courses and along median strips and other public spaces covered by green carpets devoid of diversity.

A 2011 study showed that a leaf blower emits nearly 300 times the amount of air pollutants as a pickup. The EPA has estimated that lawn care produces 13 billion pounds of toxic pollutants annually.

This equipment is also noisy. Leaf blowers emit between 80 and 85 decibels, but cheap or mid-range ones can emit up to 112 decibels. Lawn mowers range from 82 to 90 decibels. Weed whackers can emit up 96 decibels of noise.

Electric lawn equipment is gaining in popularity and will slowly lessen the amount of fossil fuels burned to cut millions of acres of grass — a 2005 study found that about 40 million acres in the continental United States has some form of lawn on it. Electric equipment is also quieter than its gas-powered counterparts.

Much of the 90 million pounds or so of fertilizer dumped on lawns annually are fossil-fuel products. Nitrogen fertilizer, for instance, is made primarily from methane.

As stormwater carrying nitrogen and phosphorus from fertilizer runs off into streams and rivers and eventually into larger waterbodies such as Narragansett Bay, it impacts ecosystems and fuels algal blooms, some toxic, that suck oxygen from water.

On Rhode Island’s Aquidneck Island, for example, stormwater runoff carrying these nutrients is stressing coastal waters and contaminating the reservoirs that feed the Newport Water System.

The amount of toxic chemicals applied to lawns and public grounds annually to jolt grass to life and kill pests is staggering. This copious amount of poison, about 80 million pounds annually, is marked by white and yellow flags warning us not to let children or pets onto these monolithic spaces whose appearance trumps their health and that of the surrounding environment.

These warning flags are planted because of the 30 commonly used lawn pesticides 17 are probable or possible carcinogens; 11 are linked to birth defects; 19 to reproductive impacts; 24 to liver or kidney damage; 14 possess neurotoxicity; and 18 cause disruption of the endocrine (hormonal) system. Another 16 are toxic to birds; 24 are toxic to aquatic life; and 11 are deadly to bees.

Of course, these poisons don’t just kill or harm their intended targets.

While these chemicals hang around “feeding your lawn” or killing life, they are breaking down and working their way into the environment — until another application is applied, sometimes just a few weeks later, and the cycle repeats.

Poisons from these artificial fertilizers and the various -cides applied to lawns can seep into groundwater — contaminating drinking-water supplies — or turn to dust and ride the wind. They cling to people and pets who walk, run, and lie on treated grass. They get kicked up during youth sporting events.

These chemicals can be inhaled like pollen or fine particulates, causing nausea, coughing, headaches, and shortness of breath. For asthmatic kids, they can trigger coughing fits and asthma attacks.

Two of the most common pesticides, glyphosate used in Roundup and 2,4-dichlorophenoxyacetic acid (2,4-D) in Weed B Gon Max, have been linked to a number of health issues, including developmental disorders and cancer. The latter is a neurotoxicant that contains half the ingredients in Agent Orange, according to Beyond Pesticides, a Washington, D.C.-based nonprofit.

The Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC) has called 2,4-D “the most dangerous pesticide you've never heard of.”

Developed by Dow Chemical in the 1940s, the NRDC says this herbicide helped usher in the green, pristine lawns of postwar America, ridding backyards of vilified dandelion and white clover.

Researchers have observed apparent links between exposure to 2,4-D and non-Hodgkin's lymphoma and sarcoma, a soft-tissue cancer, according to the NRDC. It notes, however, that both of these cancers can be caused by a number of chemicals, including dioxin, which was frequently mixed into formulations of 2,4-D until the mid-1990s.

In 2015, the International Agency for Research on Cancer declared 2,4-D a possible human carcinogen.

Last year Bayer paid nearly $11 billion to settle a lawsuit over subsidiary Monsanto’s weedkiller Roundup, which has faced numerous lawsuits over claims it causes cancer.

Lawns are one of the most grown crops in the United States, but unless you are a goat or a dog with an upset stomach their nutritional value is zero. Yet the collective we continues to spend about $36 billion a year on lawn care.

Instead of putting public health at risk and degrading the environment with a chemically treated lawn, create a yard with a diverse mix of native trees, shrubs, and plants; it is cheaper to maintain, easier to take care of, environmentally beneficial, and more interesting.

Native plants support native wildlife and insects, are accustomed to the weather and soil, and are pest resistant. They support the pollinators of our food crops, clean the air and water, and help regulate the climate. They also make good natural buffers, which capture rainfall and filter stormwater runoff.

Frank Carini is editor of ecoRI News.

The first gasoline-powered lawn mower, 1902

Todd McLeish: Frozen frogs are thawing out for spring but face death on the roads

Wood frog

— Photo by Brian Gratwicke

From ecoRI News (ecori.org)

The onset of the coronavirus pandemic a yer ago coincided with the annual migration of frogs and salamanders to their breeding ponds, a trek that often results in mass mortalities as they cross roads trying to reach their preferred waterbody. The lockdown during the early stages of the pandemic last year gave a significant reprieve to amphibian populations, reducing roadway mortalities by as much as half, according to a New England researcher.

But this year, with traffic back to near normal levels, frogs and salamanders aren’t likely to fare as well. And wood frogs will likely be at the top of the list of roadkill victims.

In southern New England, wood frogs are one of the first signs of spring, according to herpetologist Mike Cavaliere, the Audubon Society of Rhode Island’s stewardship specialist. They are the first species to emerge from their winter hibernation, typically in mid to late March. And as soon as they awaken, he said, they hop to their breeding pools to seek a mate on the first night it rains.

“What’s particularly amazing about wood frogs is that they can produce a natural antifreeze that allows them to almost freeze completely solid in winter,” Cavaliere said. “This antifreeze is produced when the frogs start to feel ice crystals begin to form in late fall.”

Unique among frogs in the Northeast, the wood frog’s antifreeze is a chemical reaction between stored urine and glucose, which protects a frog’s cells and organs from freezing while allowing the rest of its body to freeze.

“Its brain shuts down, its heart stops, its lungs stop, everything stops for months. It’s like they’re in suspended animation,” Cavaliere said. “And once spring comes, they thaw out and the heart starts beating again. After about a day, they start hopping around, eating and mating right away. It’s an amazing feat of evolution that they’ve developed.”

Wood frogs are often joined by spring peepers and spotted salamanders in migrating to their breeding pools during rainy nights in March, but it’s the frogs that are killed in the greatest numbers.

“Road mortality is one of the great seemingly unassessed sources of pressure for amphibians,” said Greg LeClair, a graduate student at the University of Maine who coordinates The Big Night, an amphibian monitoring project to quantify the roadkill of frogs and salamanders during their spring migration. “We know that disease and climate are affecting amphibians, but road mortality has long been suspected to be a serious problem, though there is no data to quantify population declines.”

LeClair said that road mortality can be as high as 100 percent in some areas when traffic is high during the one night of the season that most migration takes place.

“The average is 20 percent of amphibians at any road crossing will get nailed by a car in a given year,” he said. “That’s devastating for some species.”

During The Big Night, volunteers at 300 sites around Maine typically find two living amphibians crossing the road for every one dead one. But last year, with far fewer vehicles on the road because of the pandemic, twice as many frogs and salamanders survived the journey. In fact, a study by the Road Ecology Center found that pandemic lockdowns last year spared millions of animals from roadway deaths.

“We had record survival, but we’ll never be able to replicate that data again,” said LeClair, noting the impossibility of experimentally reducing region-wide traffic levels like happened with the pandemic.

While last year’s reduction in road mortality probably resulted in a short-term increase in amphibian populations, LeClair said that doesn’t mean there will be more breeding activity this year, since it takes several years for amphibians to grow to adulthood and begin breeding.

“It will take a couple years to determine if amphibian populations benefitted from the pandemic. My suspicion is leaning toward no benefit,” he said. “Most amphibian populations are driven by juvenile survival more than adult survival, so impacts to juveniles have stronger impacts than impacts to adults. Dispersing juveniles last summer likely encountered normal-level traffic as they left the pool to find a territory.”

Whether wood frogs and other amphibians benefitted from the pandemic shutdowns, their increased survival rate last spring almost certainly benefitted other wildlife.

“Their eggs and tadpoles are a major food source for other animals in spring,” Cavaliere said. “It’s one of the first sources of protein available, so spotted turtles and other reptiles and amphibians will eat them, as will any other scavenger who’s hungry in spring and looking for protein.”

Those interested in helping scientists gather data about frog populations in Rhode Island should sign up to participate in FrogWatch through the Roger Williams Park Zoo. Online training for the program is available through March 31.

Rhode Island resident and author Todd McLeish, an ecoRI News contributor, runs a wildlife blog.

Mass. bill would mandate solar panels on new buildings

Installing solar panels on a house

From ecoRI News (ecori.org)

Massachusetts legislators have filed two bills that would require rooftop solar panels to be installed on new residential and commercial buildings.

The Solar Neighborhoods Act, filed by Rep. Mike Connolly (D.-Cambridge) and Rep. Jack Lewis (D.-Framingham), would require solar panels to be installed on the roofs of newly built homes, apartments, and office buildings. The bill allows for exemptions if a roof is too shaded for solar panels to be effective. A similar bill was filed by Sen. Jamie Eldridge (D.-Acton).

Connolly said the legislation is a necessary step in a transition away from fossil fuels to renewable energy.

“Combating climate change will require robust solutions, and the mobilization of all of our resources, so I’m excited to reintroduce this legislation and continue working with my colleagues and stakeholders in taking this bold step forward,” he said.

A 2018 report from the Environment America Research & Policy Center found that requiring rooftop solar panels on all new homes built in Massachusetts would add more than 2,300 megawatts of solar capacity by 2045, nearly doubling the solar capacity that has been installed in Massachusetts to date.

The amount of installed solar-energy capacity has increased more than 70-fold in Massachusetts during the past decade, according to Environment America. In recent years, the growth of solar has been held back by arbitrary caps on the state’s most important solar energy policy, net metering, as well as uncertainty over solar incentive programs, according to Ben Hellerstein, state director for Environment Massachusetts.

Massachusetts could generate up to 47 percent of its electricity from rooftop solar panels, according to a 2016 study from the National Renewable Energy Laboratory.

During the last legislative session, the Joint Committee on Telecommunications, Utilties and Energy gave a favorable report to similar legislation, but it didn’t advance to a vote on the floor of either chamber.

“Every day, a clean, renewable, limitless source of energy is shining down on the roofs of our homes and businesses,” Hellerstein said. “With this bill, we can tap into our potential for rooftop solar energy and take a big step toward a healthier, safer future.