RAWA – Recovering America’s Wildlife Act
12/8/22 – The most important U.S. conservation legislation since the Endangered Species Act
Hello everyone:
As always, please remember to scroll past the end of the essay to read some curated Anthropocene news.
Now on to this week’s writing:
Important things are happening in Montreal at the COP15 Biodiversity conference gets underway. At least I hope so. There’s reporting on some chaos and division as nations gather to create a new 10-year plan to reduce biodiversity loss. Typically, with these types of global conferences, the bulk of the negotiating has been sorted out before folks show up. But negotiators are apparently struggling to agree on the 20 targets that will define the international effort to reduce, and then reverse, biodiversity loss.
Or, as a Times article put it, “there is hope that the world could agree on an official plan to protect nature.” That’s either the most depressing or hopeful sentence I’ve ever heard. Regardless, here’s an excellent assessment from Carbon Brief of what each country attending COP15 wants to see in the final agreement.
Failure in Montreal would be failure to address the cataclysmic fate of plants and animals under the human heel. As UN secretary general António Guterres noted in his opening speech, humans have become “a weapon of mass extinction” because of our “orgy of destruction.” For a slightly more diplomatic overview of why representatives from around the world have gathered to discuss a plan to protect life on Earth, you can read this excellent summary from The Nature Conservancy or browse a Guardian illustrated explainer.
I’m ashamed, if not surprised, to say that the U.S. is not a signatory to the U.N. Convention on Biological Diversity – the only U.N. member state not to sign the 1991 agreement – but the Biden administration is more or less aligned with its goals and has appointed a special envoy for biodiversity just in time for COP15.
I’ll talk about the Montreal meeting next week. As COP15 plays out, though, there is an extraordinary and important piece of U.S. conservation legislation that might be on the verge of being passed, and that’s the good news I want to tell you about.
Welcome to RAWA, the Recovering America’s Wildlife Act, the most important American conservation bill since the Endangered Species Act, which passed in 1973. In its simplest terms, RAWA is a large pot of money – more than $1.3 billion per year - to be distributed from the federal government to states and tribal governments for the purpose of managing “fish and wildlife species of greatest conservation need.”
RAWA passed the House in June. Its passage in the Senate right now depends on a) a final agreement on a funding mechanism, and on b) Congress somehow managing to pass the massive omnibus spending bill in the next week or so (to which RAWA would be attached). If either of those steps fail, then the next Congress will need to start over again. Even in that scenario, though, it should pass, but wildlife could use a win right now. In this era of accelerating destruction of the natural world, RAWA is a small bright light amid the gloom.
You can dig into the legislative text, but here’s the skinny: RAWA provides money and guidelines, but the work being funded is entirely managed by state fish and wildlife agencies, which already have detailed SWAPs (State Wildlife Action Plans). The intent of the bill is partly to boost states and tribal efforts to recover species listed as Threatened or Endangered, but mostly to help them do the preventative conservation work that will keep other species off those lists.
Doing so is a win-win, because by the time a species is in so much trouble that it’s listed as Endangered, the costs of recovery have grown dramatically and the methods of recovery may require increased restrictions of human activity. (For examples, think of black-footed ferrets and wolves in ranch country or northern spotted owls in logging country, and of the conflicts those Endangered listings have caused.) Protecting habitat and rebuilding healthy populations of at-risk species benefits economies as well as ecosystems.
The bill has surprisingly bipartisan support in both the House and Senate. In the latter, it has sixteen Republican co-sponsors. But it’s only a surprise in this political climate. There has long been bipartisan interest in species protection, not least because U.S. wildlife-related recreation is worth $140 billion a year. Conservative efforts for conservation have generally been rooted in hunting and fishing, rather than in ecology more generally, but the decades of bipartisan support for the hook and bullet species have made a difference in those species’ habitats, and thus to a lesser degree for the other species within them. It hasn’t been enough, though, as evidenced by the catastrophic drop in wildlife populations.
RAWA provides ecologically-aware politicians the exciting prospect of funneling funds to the less charismatic species who desperately need it, like salamanders, sturgeon, freshwater mussels, migratory warblers, and damselflies. But it also provides conservatives with a bulwark against what they see as excessive federal intervention in how states manage their lands. State agencies distribute the funds according to their SWAPs and, if all goes well, the at-risk species never make it onto a federal list of Threatened or Endangered species, which would incur significant federal regulations. The miracle of RAWA, then, seems to be that it hits the sweet spot between good ethics, good policy, and good politics.
$1.3 billion per year will be an extraordinary flood of funding for fish and wildlife agencies accustomed to a severe annual drought. State agencies together have identified over 12,000 species in need of conservation attention, according to a RAWA fact sheet (pdf download) from the National Wildlife Federation, and current federal funding provides less than 5% of the funds necessary to meet those needs.
I should note here that the money allocated to tribes - $97.5 million a year – is far too low. 574 recognized tribes manage 140 million acres (about 7% of the continental U.S.) and hundreds of at-risk species. That said, RAWA is a huge improvement over current policy, since at the moment there’s no baseline annual conservation funding for the tribes. RAWA is a “game-changer,” as an excellent RAWA overview by Vox points out, but as one expert said, “the inequities of funding for tribal fish and wildlife is one of the most important and least-known issues in conservation.”
The Vox piece also explained the funding problem for the states in more detail:
Much of the work to protect animals falls on state wildlife agencies. They have a range of programs to monitor and manage plant and animal populations that include reintroducing locally extinct species and setting regulations for hunting and fishing. Yet these agencies have only been able to help a small sliver of the nation’s imperiled animals…
The first problem is money. Roughly 80 percent of funding for state-led conservation comes from selling hunting and fishing licenses, in addition to federal excise taxes on related gear, such as guns and ammo. But these activities aren’t as popular as they once were. In the early 1980s, for example, hunters made up 7.2 percent of the US population; by 2020, that proportion had fallen to 4.2 percent, according to the environmental advocacy group Wildlife for All.
Another problem is how state agencies spend those dwindling funds. Virtually all of the money for conservation is funneled into animals that people like to hunt or fish, such as elk and trout, said Daniel Rohlf, a law professor at Lewis & Clark Law School. That leaves out countless other species, many of which are threatened with extinction. “At the state level, there’s been almost zero focus on non-game fish and wildlife,” Rohlf said.
Over a third of U.S. fish and wildlife species are at risk of extinction, according to a Nature Conservancy write-up on the importance of RAWA. At least 150 species are considered extinct, while more than 1,600 species are already listed under the Endangered Species Act. And then there are those 12,000 “species of greatest conservation need,” or SGCNs, that the state agencies have prioritized for protection. These are the plants, fish, shellfish, mammals, birds, amphibians, reptiles, and invertebrates that state agencies know are in desperate need of protection, but which rarely receive the funding of the hook and bullet species.
I highly recommend that you look at your state’s SWAP, which you can find here. If nothing else, digging around in it will give you insight into a) what species around you are struggling, and b) the really amazing work that these fish and wildlife agencies are doing.
Staff at state agencies create their SWAPs with input from conservation groups, scientists, and other local experts and stakeholders. Judging by the Maine SWAP, these are incredibly comprehensive documents, written by the biologists, ecologists, and other scientists who spend their lives in quiet investigation. (I’m reminded of Thoreau’s aphorism - “The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation” – which probably includes ecologists hoping to fund protection for freshwater mussels.)
Maine’s action plan lists 378 at-risk species, and each has a detailed assessment of stressors, associated habitats, and actions to be taken. RAWA will bring in about $15.2 million a year here, which works out to about $40,200 per species. Not that it works that way, of course. Some species (the north Atlantic right whale, say, or the little brown bat and the rusty-patched bumble bee) are in more desperate straits than others, or will require far more effort and expense than others. And in some cases it may be possible to benefit multiple species at once by preserving or rewilding habitats that host a wide variety of at-risk species. This is perhaps most true for alpine areas, saltmarshes, vernal pools and other wetlands, or grasslands inhabited by numerous insects, which make up 119 of Maine’s 378 SGCNs.
I queried Steve Walker, Coordinator for the Beginning with Habitat Program at the Maine Department of Inland Fisheries and Wildlife (MDIFW), about how RAWA funds might be used. I knew already that MDIFW was ready to go (here is the MDIFW page on RAWA), but didn’t realize how ready they are. Walker attached several “Shovel-Ready Project Examples,” each of which was actually a comprehensive, multi-faceted approach to conservation that described a variety of projects MDIFW has in mind. These include:
A Landowner Incentive Program for Conserving Priority Species and Habitats, with subheadings for Cooperative Management Agreements, Focus Area Land Acquisition, and Habitat Restoration. Estimated cost: $2.5 million/year.
Improving Habitat Connectivity in Maine to Strengthen Aquatic Fish and Wildlife Species, Habitats and Climate Adaptation: This is mostly about wildlife crossings, particularly the replacement of culverts and other stream crossings that limit wildlife movement and force them onto roads. (I wrote extensively about wildlife crossings in a three-part series last year.) Estimated cost: $5 million/year.
Advancing Conservation for Nationally At-Risk Species to Prevent the Need for Federal Listing under the Endangered Species Act, which lists project ideas for Blanding’s and Spotted Turtles, Monarch Butterflies, Saltmarsh Sparrows, and Northern Bog Lemmings. Estimated cost: $2.5 million/year.
Gulf of Maine Pelagic Ecosystem Survey to Inform Offshore Energy Development. Unlike the previous examples, this is a one-time single project meant to proactively assess the marine ecosystems that will be impacted by offshore wind. Estimated cost: $3 million.
Looking ahead to the exciting prospect of RAWA funding, Walker noted (diplomatically) that “the historic lack of non-game funding requires our department to be very surgically strategic about conservation strategies for addressing SGCN recovery. Should RAWA funds become available, we will be able to implement more of these recovery strategies.” Of all the various strategies MDIFW will employ, from fighting invasive species to landowner education, it will be the purchase of land, i.e. the “direct conservation of key habitats,” that “likely carries the largest price tag.”
All of this work will be done side-by-side with partnering institutions and organizations, from conservation groups to universities and land trusts. When I asked about the latter, Walker said that “local land trusts have historically been key partners in our department’s efforts to implement SWAP priorities,” and that MDIFW “hopes to stretch RAWA funds dedicated for habitat conservation as far as possible with the help of local land trust matching efforts.”
With that partnership in mind, and to get a sense of how RAWA funds might work at the local level, I checked in with folks I know at Coastal Rivers Conservation Trust here in midcoast Maine. Executive Director Steven Hufnagel mentioned their ongoing projects to conserve connected “moose highways,” or wildlife corridors for larger mammals like moose, bear, and bobcats. Land Conservation Director Joan Ray suggested that a good example of what they might seek funding for would be the protection of Great Blue Heron rookeries on the Bristol peninsula. (One of these is just two miles down the road from me, behind a friend’s house.) Sure enough, the Maine SWAP has an action plan for Great Blue Herons which specifically cites a 73% drop in coastal breeding populations from 1983 to 2013. These herons are listed as a Priority 2 species, so not as at-risk as others, but still a good place to spend some money if it’s available.
And so now the question is whether this Senate will manage to push RAWA over the finish line. Both of Maine’s senators, Angus King (I) and Susan Collins (R), are co-sponsors of the bill. When I reached out to Sen. King’s office for an update on the likelihood of RAWA’s passage, an aide sent me a prompt reply citing King’s support and included a helpful link to an article at E&E news that had come out that morning, describing a likely breakthrough on the funding mechanism. That’s the good news.
The bad news, at least to my mind, is that the funding relies on closing a tax loophole for cryptocurrency. I could write a diatribe on the planet-killing foolishness of crypto, but for the moment I’ll just say that plants and animals in the Anthropocene deserve stability. The hallmark of the path to extinction, from their perspective, is instability. Crypto seems unlikely to ever provide stability.
Still, I’ll take it for now if it gets RAWA passed, and hope that when crypto crashes for good legislators will find a healthy alternative. The remaining hurdle is the omnibus spending bill, to which RAWA would be attached. I would advocate for you to contact your Senators immediately if it were only the details of RAWA to be worked out. But contacting politicians about passing annual spending legislation isn’t worth our time. They’ll get it done, or they won’t. RAWA’s fate, like that of the species it promises to help, is at the mercy of the bureaucratic beast.
One final related note: Yesterday was the 50th anniversary of the famed Blue Marble photograph, taken by the crew of Apollo 17. This is the image I use as the Field Guide’s icon, though I display it as it was originally taken, with the Earth “upside down,” before NASA “corrected” it for media use. I use this photo for several reasons, including the most obvious: this pale blue dot we briefly occupy is a miracle in a cold universe.
When we talk about biodiversity targets and conferences, or about protecting habitat, what we’re really talking about is developing an active empathy for our fellow species on “Spaceship Earth.” Or re-developing it, really, as we reconnect with the indigenous values which characterized nearly all of human history. These are values which, honestly, I think we all still have within us, even if we’ve papered them over with the false ideology of human supremacy. The challenge now is to center these values at a civilizational scale.
The work being done in Montreal this week and next, and the work behind RAWA, is extraordinarily important because, to the extent is succeeds, it reflects real progress in acknowledging our debt and responsibility to the life around us.
If RAWA passes, be sure to thank any of your legislators who voted for it.
Thanks for sticking with me.
In other Anthropocene news:
From Yale e360, an excellent report on the ecological importance of backyard “conservation gardens,” a fancy term for the small wild places we create and protect amid the sprawl of human development. This kind of backyard work really matters: “these areas may seem small and inconsequential, but added together they can have a major ecological impact.”
From the BBC, the EU has passed landmark legislation meant to ban the import of any goods linked to deforestation. Since wealthy European nations are major drivers of consumption, this law could have real impact.
From the Environmental Investigation Agency, a summary of the (mostly good) news for wildlife from the recent COP19 CITES conference. Protections were expanded for pangolins, vaquitas, tigers, and more.
From E&E News, obstructionism from Russia and China have caused years of deadlock for efforts to create Marine Protected Areas and other fisheries conservation plans in Antarctic waters.
From the Christian Science Monitor, a well-told story on the problems and solutions in the ongoing tragedy of millions of birds dying when they hit city windows, especially during migration.
