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Overnight News Digest: Wolves restored to the sequoia forest, next up salmon and the Columbia Basin [1]

['This Content Is Not Subject To Review Daily Kos Staff Prior To Publication.']

Date: 2023-12-23

Tonight’s science-y nature news includes

wolf updates from California and Colorado,

more “surprise” that non-human animals are complex emotional beings,

major federal funding for fisheries restorations will be administered by the tribes who have always worked to keep them healthy,

Biden’s proposal to protect old growth forests (at least mostly and only on USFS land, so far) and other forest-related news,

some plants are evolving to skip the need for animal pollinators,

armed Indigenous activists defend a butterfly from cartel-backed logging,

2023 climate wins (“This year’s climate extremes may give the impression that the planet is screwed, but climate experts say we’ve made record progress in 2023—and that gives them hope.”),

and more.

California Wolf Pack Named for Yowlumni Band of Tule River Yokuts Tribe — center for biological diversity

The California Department of Fish and Wildlife announced late Thursday that a wolf family in the Giant Sequoia National Monument will be officially known as the Yowlumni pack, after the Yowlumni band of the Tule River Yokuts Tribe. The pack was discovered late this summer living near the Tule River Tribe Reservation. The department and Tribal members coordinated efforts to honor the cultural significance of wolves in the region. A Tule River tribal elder shared that the language of the Yowlumni people was known by its speakers as the “Wolf Tongue” … The Yowlumni pack is the eighth known family of wolves to have become established in California since wolves started to return to the state on their own in late 2011. The pack was discovered by forest ecologists working in the Sequoia National Forest. Seven confirmed packs now live in the state, and most reside in northeastern California. The Yowlumni pack’s territory is the farthest south in California of any confirmed pack in modern history. [...] DNA-testing of scat from the breeding female and breeding male of this wolf family revealed that she is a direct descendant of the first wolf to come to California in 2011. Her mate was born in the 2020 litter of a northern California pack, the Lassen pack. The department estimates the female to be around 7-8 years old, based on the condition of her teeth and other physical features. The department’s announcement also revealed the pack has six pups.

Successful release of five gray wolves on colorado’s western slope

x I want to emphasize what a massive political victory each of these five wolves represents.



This rewilding referendum is a powerful expression of democratic sovereignty and a direct blow to the ranching industry’s mission to privatize public land. https://t.co/vRzffBfhKM — spencer 🦈 (@Unpop_Science) December 19, 2023

x BREAKING: In a major victory for #wolves, a settlement approved today by a District of Columbia federal court says @USFWS *must draft a new recovery plan* for gray wolves listed under the Endangered Species Act. ⬇️ 🧵https://t.co/DGrg0VAm3w pic.twitter.com/gOt5zPM6YL — Center for Biological Diversity (@CenterForBioDiv) December 14, 2023

x In a World Full of Disagreement, Wildlife Corridors Are Something That Unite Us https://t.co/z3pzXFauc3 — Sierra Magazine (@Sierra_Magazine) December 7, 2023

x A new milestone – the Annenberg Wildlife Crossing has inspired a @LEGO_Group set! Many thanks to @theerobertrock from @LIVINGHABITATS for helping to create this fun design, spreading the word on the power of crossings for biodiversity. https://t.co/8EdorzrgY4 — Annenberg Foundation (@Annenberg_FDN) December 18, 2023

If you plan to make a donation to the asshole Audubon Society, why not send a union-positive message instead

x *If* you plan to donate to @audubonsociety, know that management is giving annual raises this year to everyone EXCEPT Bird Union workers.



Show Audubon that you support workers by designating your donations to go toward the salaries of union staff. https://t.co/kmOVvgQwho pic.twitter.com/eBERrWeGD3 — The Bird Union 🪶 (@thebirdunion) December 17, 2023

x New research is revealing surprising complexity in the minds of goats, pigs, and other livestock. #LongReads https://t.co/JcEFHQUGzM — News from Science (@NewsfromScience) December 17, 2023

On a campus that looks like a cross between a farm and a small research institute—with low-rise buildings nestled among pastures, stables, and the occasional dung pile—scientists are probing the mental and emotional lives of animals we’ve lived with for thousands of years, yet, from a cognitive perspective, know almost nothing about. The work is part of a small, but growing field that’s beginning to overturn the idea that livestock are dumb and unworthy of scientific attention. Over the past decade, researchers at [Research Institute for Farm Animal Biology] and elsewhere have shown that pigs show signs of empathy, goats rival dogs in some tests of social intelligence, and, in one of the field’s, um, splashiest recent finds, cows can be potty trained, suggesting a self-awareness behind the blank stares and cud chewing that has shocked even some experts. “There’s a lot to be learned by studying the mental lives of these creatures,” says Christopher Krupenye, a Johns Hopkins University psychologist who explores cognition in humans and more traditional animal models such as chimpanzees and dogs. Ignoring livestock, he says, has been a “missed opportunity” by the scientific community.

x cool paper alert



honeyguides are birds that guide humans to beehives. humans collect honey & give birds waxy comb, which the birds eat. super cool.



but wait there's more! people in diff regions use diff calls to communicate w/ honeyguides. and birds ignore

"foreign" calls https://t.co/YSZxuT59HR — Ben Freeman (@BenGFreeman1) December 8, 2023

Honeyguides, a species of African bird, are well known to guide other species to beehives. They have even been known to work with honey badgers, but their closest and most successful collaborators are humans. Several indigenous African groups work with these birds across their range. Looking at these interactions in Tanzania and Mozambique, Spottiswoode and Wood have shown that honeyguides respond more readily to the specific calls of their local honey-hunting partners than they do to the calls of honey hunters from other regions (see the Perspective by Searcy and Nowicki). Thus, honeyguides appear to learn the calls of their local partners, and honey hunters maintain these successful calls over generations.

A Long Fight to Restore Snake River Salmon — earthjustice

x The relationship of Pacific NW Tribes to salmon is thousands of years long. Even before the first Columbia River dam was built, Tribes, fishers, & conservationists were fighting for salmon. Finally, we're on a path to breach the 4 lower Snake River dams. https://t.co/1PvZT1R8RP — Earthjustice (@Earthjustice) December 18, 2023

Earthjustice has represented conservation, fishing and renewable energy groups, alongside the Nez Perce Tribe, other Columbia Basin Tribes and the State of Oregon, in court battles for 30 years to protect threatened and endangered salmon in the Columbia River Basin. [...] Efforts to protect Snake and Columbia River salmon date back much further, of course. The deep relationship of Pacific Northwest Tribes to salmon extends back thousands of years — to time immemorial. Even before the first Columbia River dam was built in the 1930s, Tribes, fishers and conservationists were fighting to protect these iconic fish.

In a Major Shift, Northwest Tribes — not U.S. Officials — Will Control Salmon Recovery Funds — propublica (this article also appeared on the front page of daily kos today)

x A recent Biden administration deal not only steers $1 billion in funding to Columbia River salmon restoration, but, for the first time, gives local tribes control over how that money is spent. https://t.co/60QanaaN1P — ProPublica (@propublica) December 22, 2023

Not only does the deal offer $1 billion in new funding for Columbia River salmon restoration, but for the first time it also grants states and tribes control — not the Bonneville Power Administration, which sells hydropower from Northwest dams — over how that money gets spent. [...] Under the new agreement, Bonneville will invest $300 million over 10 years into salmon programs, including habitat restoration and much-needed upgrades to fish hatcheries, overseen by tribes and the states of Oregon and Washington. Companies and families that buy power from Bonneville will pay some of the cost in the form of an estimated rate increase averaging 0.7 %, and the agency will recoup the rest by selling more power to California. That comes on top of a previously announced $200 million that Bonneville agreed to pay for a separate tribal plan to reintroduce salmon in areas blocked by dams. Additional money will come from the federal budget, rather than Bonneville ratepayers. In all, the Biden administration says it expects the government to spend $1 billion on state and tribal salmon recovery in the next decade.

Our brains evolved and have been shaped by forests for longer than we’ve been Homo sapiens… And it could be the eternal project of humankind, to learn what forests have figured out. ~Richard Powers, The Overstory

While old-growth protection on the 193 million acres of federal forestland managed by USFS is important, logging of old-growth trees will continue until the amended management plans are finished in 2025 and perhaps beyond as the USFS plans mandate “mixed use.” Also, this new protection doesn’t include BLM-managed lands where logging will continue.

x BREAKING: @POTUS has initiated a process to adopt protections for old-growth trees on federal lands across the US. Old-growth forests help address the climate crisis & sustain biodiversity by helping keep ecosystems intact & storing vast amounts of carbon. https://t.co/VJD4xWb7uu — Earthjustice (@Earthjustice) December 19, 2023

The Biden administration today initiated a process to adopt protection for old-growth trees on federal forestlands across the United States. The Forest Service proposed to adopt a national plan for forest management to include protections for old-growth trees within the National Forest System against threats like commercial logging through a nationwide forest plan amendment. The tree protections could bolster U.S. efforts to address the climate crisis and reduce biodiversity loss by helping keep ecosystems intact and storing vast amounts of carbon in the ground. In fact, according to the Forest Service, carbon stored in old-growth trees aids “the long-term carbon storage, stability, and resiliency of forest carbon” across the National Forest System.

Terrestrial carbon dynamics in an era of increasing wildfire — nature

x ⬆️Wildfire -> ⬇️carbon storage/forest cover feedback loops are getting stronger: "We find that intensifying wildfire regimes are increasingly exceeding biological thresholds of resilience, causing ecosystems to convert to a lower carbon-carrying capacity." https://t.co/KAGZZDPIhW — Evan Frost; wildwoods @ bsky.social (@EFrost_Wildwood) December 8, 2023

We find that intensifying wildfire regimes are increasingly exceeding biological thresholds of resilience, causing ecosystems to convert to a lower carbon-carrying capacity. Growing evidence suggests that plants compensate for fire damage by allocating carbon belowground to access nutrients released by fire, while wildfire selects for microbial communities with rapid growth rates and the ability to metabolize pyrolysed carbon. Determining controls on carbon dynamics following wildfire requires integration of experimental and modelling frameworks across scales and ecosystems.

Flowers are “giving up on” pollinators and evolving to be less attractive to them as insect numbers decline, researchers have said. A study has found the flowers of field pansies growing near Paris are 10% smaller and produce 20% less nectar than flowers growing in the same fields 20 to 30 years ago. They are also less frequently visited by insects. “Our study shows that pansies are evolving to give up on their pollinators,” said Pierre-Olivier Cheptou, one of the study’s authors and a researcher at the French National Centre for Scientific Research. “They are evolving towards self-pollination, where each plant reproduces with itself, which works in the short term but may well limit their capacity to adapt to future environmental changes.”

Indigenous activists are risking their lives for butterflies — vox

x In Mexico, armed Indigenous activists defend a butterfly from cartel-backed logging. Their ongoing battle is emblematic of the increasing danger of environmental defense and the unique stakes facing Indigenous land defenders around the globe. https://t.co/akLyT0SH5v @voxdotcom pic.twitter.com/mdJExQIZXW — Paige Vega (Blankenbuehler) (@PaigeBlank) December 20, 2023

To protect these forests — one of the few remaining wintering refuges for migrating monarchs — the local Mazahua Indigenous community in Crescencio Morales has established its own security force. Guardia comunales, or communal security units, historically operate independently from the state and federal governments, which the community says fail to prevent illegal logging in the reserve. These forces are made up of regular members of the community. Earlier this year, I visited a new base the community was building, alongside rows of high-performance pickup trucks used to navigate the difficult forest terrain, where illegal loggers often hide. Guardia comunal fighters wore military fatigues and carried lightweight semi-automatic AR-15 assault rifles. As these self-described forest defenders from Crescensio Morales fight to protect the monarch butterfly’s refuge, Indigenous leaders took the global stage at the United Nations annual climate change summit in Dubai to wage this battle on a second front: to convince world leaders to recognize the dangers environmental land defenders, particularly in Latin America, face and to build stronger mechanisms to support them.

I know we have plenty of accurate, true, current climate change associated awful news, but let’s not overlook the good news. Hope is a better fuel than despair.

x “I’m more hopeful today than I’ve ever been."



in a year of climate disasters, we've also seen record progress, from soaring solar installations to plummeting deforestation. presenting, your 2023 climate wins, wrapped. @katarinazimmer for @AtmosMag https://t.co/5l5sbjAPfm — Jason Dinh, Ph.D. (@byjasonpdinh) December 18, 2023

x What *really* happens when you upload a new observation to iNaturalist — sea star or otherwise. pic.twitter.com/GB4zGSpjkh — California Academy of Sciences (@calacademy) December 18, 2023

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