26 December 21
On Pace for a Serious Crash and Burn
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26 December 21
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There is only one barrier to the takeover: a powerful progressive grassroots election protection movement that’s savvy and well-funded and capably organized enough to defeat him.
Bannon’s plan is clear and simple. As he explained it on his Real America Voice program:
“We're going to take over the election apparatus. [Trump cultists with military and police training] are now going to volunteer to become a precinct committeeman, they're going to volunteer to become an election official, they're going to come and run for county clerk and overthrow these county clerks and they're going to take over the secretaries of state…And we're going to be relentless and we're not going to give up…And we're going to take over elections.”
Without massive clear-eyed grassroots opposition, there is no reason Bannon’s plan would not work.
With fanatic fascists as secretaries of state, the election apparatus in key swing states in the Heartland, old Confederacy and elsewhere would go straight to the Trump right, no matter how the public votes.
As we saw in Georgia 2020, Trump personally called the Republican Secretary of State demanding he swing some 12,000 votes. To his credit, Brad Raffensperger refused. But a Steve Bannonite would not. That’s their reason for putting him in there.
Bannon’s further point is to not let the vote count get even that far. His blitzkrieg is already rolling with foot soldiers whose military and police training…and guns of their own…will be difficult for ordinary citizens to withstand.
Through local elections or other means, Bannon’s “patriot” brown shirts will seize control of county and local election boards, running the voting however they like. That will certainly entail systematic Jim Crow elimination and intimidation of potential voters of youth and color, plus other suspected non-fascists, who will either be denied ballots, or will have them pitched in the trash.
In essence, nearly the entire national electoral system will be turned back to the pre 1960s South, and can be shaped to fit any electoral outcome Bannon wants.
As in school boards around the country, the assault on current election board officials is already being perpetrated with countless death threats pouring in over telephones and by other means. Physical intimidation is an essential element of a fascist takeover and the Bannonites are not shy.
The Democratic Party’s staggering lack of strategic focus, organized action, passion, and their inability to prioritize fighting back against a dangerous, highly organized, well funded, and fully transparent fascist authoritarian right wing movement can ultimately result in the destruction of our cherished democracy. The party’s abject failure in the recent Virginia governor’s race shows that the corporate Democrats are unprepared and incapable of opposing this assault. Bannon’s choreographed, focussed attack on our electoral system is far more than the Clintonites can handle. Their first response will be denial, followed by failure, followed by blaming the left.
Thus the resistance must come from the progressive grassroots, the election protection movement that has grown over the past two decades to demand universal registration, paper ballots, protected voting procedures, reliable vote counts and much more. It will need to self-fund, diverting donations from the Democrats to events like the upcoming Voting Rights Summer now being organized by election protection activists from throughout the country, working with established long-time progressive leaders prepared to do what must be done to save our democracy (www.grassrootsep.org).
In particular, all Bannonite Jim Crow operatives must be explicitly opposed. Local democracy centers must carefully monitor board elections and support pro-democracy candidates. Volunteer positions must be filled with supporters of universal suffrage. Every aspect of the electoral process from the precinct to the state must be dissected, understood and protected.
It would help if the movement could divert much of the tens of millions of contributors’ dollars the corporate Democrats perennially waste on worthless TV ads and high-priced consultants, as they just did in Virginia.
But make no mistake—-this is the battle of our lifetimes, for our democracy, our planet, our survival.
Steve Bannon knows exactly what he’s doing. Do we?
———————————————————
Harvey Wasserman’s THE PEOPLE’S SPIRAL OF US HISTORY is being published in January via www.solartopia.org. Joel Segal, is former senior legislative assistant to US Rep. John Conyers. They co-convene the Grassroots Emergency Election Protection zoom Mondays at 5pm eastern (www.electionprotection2024.org).
Begin forwarded message:
From: harvey wasserman <solartopia@me.com>
Subject: MARC: THIS IS SLIGHTLY UPDATED; PLEASE USE THIS VERSION THANKS!!! Steve Bannon's MEIN KAMPF for a Fascist American Must be Defeated by Joel Segal & Harvey Wasserman for RSN.org
Date: December 23, 2021 at 8:47:46 PM CST
To: Marc Ash <ma@rsn.org>, RSN Editors <1two3@rsn.org>
Steve Bannon’s MEIN KAMPF for a Fascist America Must be Defeated
By Joel Segal & Harvey Wasserman
Steve Bannon has mapped out a clear and present strategy for using our own electoral system to turn the US into a fascist dictatorship.
There is only one barrier to the takeover: a powerful progressive grassroots election protection movement that’s savvy and well-funded and capably organized enough to defeat him.
Bannon’s plan is clear and simple. As he explained it on his Real America Voice program:
“We're going to take over the election apparatus. [Trump cultists with military and police training] are now going to volunteer to become a precinct committeeman, they're going to volunteer to become an election official, they're going to come and run for county clerk and overthrow these county clerks and they're going to take over the secretaries of state…And we're going to be relentless and we're not going to give up…And we're going to take over elections.”
Without massive clear-eyed grassroots opposition, there is no reason Bannon’s plan would not work.
With fanatic fascists as secretaries of state, the election apparatus in key swing states in the Heartland, old Confederacy and elsewhere would go straight to the Trump right, no matter how the public votes.
As we saw in Georgia 2020, Trump personally called the Republican Secretary of State demanding he swing some 12,000 votes. To his credit, Brad Raffensperger refused. But a Steve Bannonite would not. That’s their reason for putting him in there.
Bannon’s further point is to not let the vote count get even that far. His blitzkrieg is already rolling with foot soldiers whose military and police training…and guns of their own…will be difficult for ordinary citizens to withstand.
Through local elections or other means, Bannon’s “patriot” brown shirts will seize control of county and local election boards, running the voting however they like. That will certainly entail systematic Jim Crow elimination and intimidation of potential voters of youth and color, plus other suspected non-fascists, who will either be denied ballots, or will have them pitched in the trash.
In essence, nearly the entire national electoral system will be turned back to the pre 1960s South, and can be shaped to fit any electoral outcome Bannon wants.
As in school boards around the country, the assault on current election board officials is already being perpetrated with countless death threats pouring in over telephones and by other means. Physical intimidation is an essential element of a fascist takeover and the Bannonites are not shy.
The Democratic Party’s staggering lack of strategic focus, organized action, passion, and their inability to prioritize fighting back against a dangerous, highly organized, well funded, and fully transparent fascist authoritarian right wing movement can ultimately result in the destruction of our cherished democracy. The party’s abject failure in the recent Virginia governor’s race shows that the corporate Democrats are unprepared and incapable of opposing this assault. Bannon’s choreographed, focussed attack on our electoral system is far more than the Clintonites can handle. Their first response will be denial, followed by failure, followed by blaming the left.
Thus the resistance must come from the progressive grassroots, the election protection movement that has grown over the past two decades to demand universal registration, paper ballots, protected voting procedures, reliable vote counts and much more. It will need to self-fund, diverting donations from the Democrats to events like the upcoming Voting Rights Summer now being organized by election protection activists from throughout the country, working with established long-time progressive leaders prepared to do what must be done to save our democracy (www.grassrootsep.org).
In particular, all Bannonite Jim Crow operatives must be explicitly opposed. Local democracy centers must carefully monitor board elections and support pro-democracy candidates. Volunteer positions must be filled with supporters of universal suffrage. Every aspect of the electoral process from the precinct to the state must be dissected, understood and protected.
It would help if the movement could divert much of the tens of millions of contributors’ dollars the corporate Democrats perennially waste on worthless TV ads and high-priced consultants, as they just did in Virginia.
But make no mistake—-this is the battle of our lifetimes, for our democracy, our planet, our survival.
Steve Bannon knows exactly what he’s doing. Do we?
Harvey Wasserman’s THE PEOPLE’S SPIRAL OF US HISTORY is being published in January via www.solartopia.org. Joel Segal, is former senior legislative assistant to US Rep. John Conyers. They co-convene the Grassroots Emergency Election Protection zoom Mondays at 5pm eastern (www.electionprotection2024.org).
Reader Supported News is the Publication of Origin for this work. Permission to republish is freely granted with credit and a link back to Reader Supported News.
Donald Trump. (photo: unknown)
"It appears that he tried to do a taping several times, but he wouldn't say the right thing," Rep. Bennie Thompson told The Washington Post, citing witness interviews and media reports.
Publicly, Trump remained silent for 187 minutes after his supporters breached the Capitol on January 6. The committee investigating the riot is trying to understand why the former president took so long to speak as it weighs recommending criminal charges against him.
Thompson's comments follow increasing speculation that Trump's behavior during the riot could mean he illegally obstructed Congress.
Rep. Liz Cheney, the vice chair of the January 6 committee, previously suggested that the committee could find Trump guilty of criminal obstruction.
In the video he eventually put out on January 6, Trump told his supporters at the Capitol to go home and called the mob "very special people."
Thompson told The Post that the fact that Trump had to keep retaping the video was of interest to the committee because it could help explain why he took so long to speak.
The reasons for Trump's delayed response were significant because they could help the committee decide whether to make a criminal referral against Trump, Thompson said.
In that case, Congress would inform the Justice Department that it believed a crime was committed, and federal prosecutors would decide whether to bring charges against Trump.
"One of those concerns is that whether or not it was intentional, and whether or not that lack of attention for that longer period of time, would warrant a referral," he told The Post.
Representatives for Trump did not immediately respond to Insider's request for comment.
Apple CEO Tim Cook. (photo: Apple)
ALSO SEE: Apple Quietly Removes All References
to CSAM Scanning, but Says Nothing Has Changed
Previously, Apple had announced it was simply delaying the launch of the technology due to the criticism, stating it needed time to listen to feedback and revise its implementation, according to Macrumors. Back in September it released the following statement, “Last month we announced plans for features intended to help protect children from predators who use communication tools to recruit and exploit them, and limit the spread of Child Sexual Abuse Material. Based on feedback from customers, advocacy groups, researchers and others, we have decided to take additional time over the coming months to collect input and make improvements before releasing these critically important child safety features.”
However, instead of the company stating that these plans are still in-place, Macrumors writes the company simply erased every sign of it from its Child Safety website. As you can see from visiting the link, it only talks about the just-launched nudity-detection algorithm for Messages, which is not enabled by default and appeared in iOS 15.2. As we noted in our coverage, “…once implemented on a device with a family-sharing account, it will scan for nudity within images sent and received by the Messages app. If nudity is detected, Messages blurs the image and displays an on-screen warning, which explains the dangers of sharing explicit photos and asks whether the viewer would like to proceed.” So far, it seems this technology has been received without much hullabaloo, but the week isn’t over yet.
Interestingly, critics of Apple’s iCloud scanning technology put forth what essentially boils down to a “slippery slope” argument, saying if Apple can design an algorithm that scans for X, what’s stopping it from scanning for Y and Z in the future? As the Electronic Freedom Foundation put it, “All it would take to widen the narrow backdoor that Apple is building is an expansion of the machine learning parameters to look for additional types of content, or a tweak of the configuration flags to scan the accounts of anyone, not just children. That’s not a slippery slope; that’s a fully built system just waiting for external pressure to make the slightest change.” There were also concerns that governments would co-opt Apple’s technology for surveillance of its citizens, a claim the company vociferously promised it would never allow.
Finally, despite Apple removing mentions of CSAM from its Child Safety portal, we were still able to dig up the original text Apple released when it announced its new initiative, so perhaps Apple just forgot about that PDF. What is noteworthy, however, is the newly updated Child Safety pages only mention the nudity detection for images in Messenger, and not CSAM. Despite the removal of references to the controversial technology on its website, an Apple spokesman told The Verge the company’s plans haven’t changed, and that it’s still just delayed.
Protection against Omicron symptoms lasts about 10 weeks. (photo: Finnbarr Webster/Getty Images)
The UK Health Security Agency said protection against symptomatic COVID-19 caused by the variant dropped from 70% to 45% after a Pfizer booster for those initially vaccinated with the shot developed by Pfizer with BioNTech.
In the same analysis published on Thursday, the agency found the effectiveness of Moderna's booster paired with two doses of the Pfizer vaccine held at 70% to 75% for up to nine weeks, though not many people in the study received this regimen, which could affect the accuracy of the finding.
For those fully vaccinated with AstraZeneca's vaccine, booster effectiveness dropped from 60% to 35% with a Pfizer booster and to 45% with a Moderna booster after 10 weeks, the UKHSA said.
Eric Topol, the director of the Scripps Research Translational Institute, tweeted on Thursday that the UK findings were a "replication" of what had been seen in Israel.
New from today's @UKHSA report is the finding that Omicron has faster vaccine effectiveness waning vs symptomatic infection than Delta (N for Moderna small)https://t.co/viVjY37rNQ which is a replication of what has been seen in Israel @BarakRaveh pic.twitter.com/ynNM0DlRkv
— Eric Topol (@EricTopol) December 23, 2021
On Wednesday, Israel became the first country to announce fourth doses to try to bolster immunity against Omicron for those most susceptible to COVID-19, including people older than 60 and health workers.
But other countries, such as the UK, are holding tight for more data on how well existing regimens work and the safety and effectiveness of additional doses.
In the US, most immunocompromised people could already get a fourth dose from six months after the third, before Omicron emerged. Those who got Johnson & Johnson's single-dose vaccine initially aren't recommended more than two doses, guidance from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said.
Dr. Mary Ramsay, the head of immunization at UKHSA, told The Independent that the UK wouldn't rush into changing its policy on vaccination until it had clarity on whether the protection against severe disease was affected by Omicron.
The agency said it would be a few weeks before booster protection against severe COVID-19 caused by Omicron could be estimated because there hadn't been many people getting sick from it. "However, based on experience with previous variants, this is likely to be substantially higher than the estimates against symptomatic disease," it said.
Adam Finn, a member of the group of experts who advise the UK government, told LBC radio on Friday that the committee would provide recommendations "at some point in the New Year."
"We do need to see how things go through this wave and beyond. I think there may well be people who received their boosters early who are in the older, more vulnerable age groups who may need a further jab — that has not been decided yet," he said.
To get to the figures, the UK researchers compared the vaccination rates in people who had tested positive for Omicron on a lab test with those who tested negative between November 27 — when the first Omicron cases were detected in the UK — and December 17. People with foreign travel were excluded from the analysis.
In the meantime, the experts said the priority to tackle Omicron was still to vaccinate people who weren't vaccinated and get boosters into as many people as possible.
Archbishop Desmond Tutu has died at the age of 90. (photo: Mike Hutchings/Reuters)
The Nobel laureate, often described as South Africa’s moral conscience, died on Boxing Day in Cape Town
Tutu, described by foreign observers and people in his country as the moral conscience of the nation, died in Cape Town on Boxing Day.
“The passing of archbishop emeritus Desmond Tutu is another chapter of bereavement in our nation’s farewell to a generation of outstanding South Africans who have bequeathed us a liberated South Africa,” the president, Cyril Ramaphosa, said.
“From the pavements of resistance in South Africa to the pulpits of the world’s great cathedrals and places of worship, and the prestigious setting of the Nobel peace prize ceremony, the Arch distinguished himself as a non-sectarian, inclusive champion of universal human rights.”
Tutu was diagnosed with prostate cancer in the late 1990s and in recent years he was hospitalised on several occasions to treat infections associated with his treatment.
“Ultimately, at the age of 90, he died peacefully at the Oasis Frail Care Centre in Cape Town this morning,” Dr Mamphela Ramphele, acting chairperson of the Archbishop Desmond Tutu IP Trust and coordinator of the office of the archbishop, said in a statement on behalf of the Tutu family.
She did not give details on the cause of death.
Tutu was born in Klerksdorp, a farming town 100 miles (160km) south-west of Johannesburg. The sickly son of a headteacher and a domestic servant, he trained first as a teacher before becoming an Anglican priest.
As a cleric, he travelled widely, gaining an MA in theology from London University. Though he only emerged as a key figure in the liberation struggle in the mid-1970s, he was to have a huge impact, becoming a household name across the globe.
Excitable, emotional, charismatic and highly articulate, Tutu won the Nobel peace prize in 1984. A vocal supporter of sanctions against South Africa, he was detested by supporters of the apartheid regime, who saw him as an agitator and traitor. Tutu was however protected not just by his wit and combative spirit but by his immense popularity and respect. In 1986 he was appointed archbishop of Cape Town, the effective head of the Anglican church in his homeland.
Tutu always kept his distance from the African National Congress (ANC), the party which spearheaded the liberation movement and has now been in power in South Africa for more than 20 years. He refused to back its armed struggle and support unconditionally leaders such as Nelson Mandela.
However Tutu shared Mandela’s vision of a multiracial society in which all communities live together without rancour or discrimination and is credited with coining the phrase “rainbow nation” to describe this vision.
After the nation’s first free election in 1994, Mandela, who had become the president of a free South Africa, asked Tutu to chair of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC), the controversial and emotional hearings into apartheid-era human rights abuses.
The TRC was described as the “climax of Tutu’s career” and lauded across the world as a pioneering effort to heal deep historic wounds.
However Tutu found the experience deeply traumatic. He was saddened and perplexed by the ferocious criticism from the white rightwing, some mainstream liberals and the ANC. The terrible testimony that he listened to day after day brought deep emotional stress too, with TV viewers watching as the tough, witty cleric put his head in his hands and wept.
In late 1990s, Tutu, suffering prostate cancer, began to spend more time with his wife of 60 years, four children, and numerous grandchildren. He continued to criticise the ANC and was initially excluded from the state funeral of Nelson Mandela in 2013. His absence provoked a public outcry. Tutu later said he had been “very hurt”.
Despite his illness, Tutu remained interested in world affairs and determined to use his enormous moral prestige to make a difference. In 2015, he launched a petition launched urging global leaders to create a world run on renewable energies within 35 years, which was backed by more than 300,000 people globally. It described climate change as “one of the greatest moral challenges of our time”.
He also spoke out against homophobic legislation in Uganda and argued in favour of assisted dying.
Mandela, who lived near Tutu’s home in Soweto and also won the Nobel prize, described his close friend as “sometimes strident, often tender, never afraid, seldom without humour”.
“Desmond Tutu’s voice will always be the voice of the voiceless,” Mandela said.
In 2009 Barack Obama described Tutu as “a crusader for freedom, a spiritual leader … and a respected statesman [who] has become a symbol of kindness and hope far beyond the borders of his native land”.
Friends remembered Tutu as a man of deep faith whose charm, warmth and intelligence few could resist, and who was happiest when active on behalf of others.
“I love to be loved,” he told the BBC’s Sue Lawley when appearing on Desert Island Discs in 1994.
The second album by John Lennon, released in 1971, Imagine and the song it was named for became an instant classic. (photo: Imagine album cover)
Lyrics John Lennon & The Plastic Ono Band.
Written by, John Lennon.
From the 1971 album, Imagine.
Imagine there's no Heaven
It's easy if you try
No Hell below us
Above us only sky
Imagine all the people
Livin' for today
Aaa haa
Imagine there's no countries
It isn't hard to do
Nothing to kill or die for
And no religion too
Imagine all the people
Livin' life in peace
Yoo hoo
You may say I'm a dreamer
But I'm not the only one
I hope someday you'll join us
And the world will be as one
Imagine no possessions
I wonder if you can
No need for greed or hunger
A brotherhood of man
Imagine all the people
Sharin' all the world
Yoo hoo
You may say I'm a dreamer
But I'm not the only one
I hope someday you'll join us
And the world will live as one
A black-footed ferret, part of a captive breeding program in northern Colorado. (photo: Kathryn Scott Osler/The Denver Post/Getty Images)
Each of them teaches a lesson for us to carry into 2022.
The idea behind this yearslong effort to clone endangered ferrets was one of preservation. The existing population is small and lacks genetic diversity — all of the remaining ferrets are as closely related as siblings or first cousins — making it more vulnerable to threats like disease. Cloning animals that lived decades ago, when more individuals roamed the Great Plains, is a way to inject much-needed new genes into the mix. Scientists cloned Elizabeth Ann using DNA from a ferret that lived in the 1980s.
“I think these technologies can really provide a basis for ensuring that we have wildlife populations in the future,” Oliver Ryder, director of conservation genetics at the San Diego Zoo Wildlife Alliance, who was involved in the cloning process, told NPR in March.
Cutting-edge science and a blast from the past! Meet Elizabeth Ann. She’s the first-ever cloned black-footed ferret, created from the frozen cells of a ferret that died more than 30 years ago: https://t.co/PJNo7NaFhV
— US Fish and Wildlife (@USFWSMtnPrairie) February 18, 2021
Check the thread for more about Elizabeth Anne! pic.twitter.com/0i85mv9FgH
Black-footed ferrets weren’t the only animals to score major victories in 2021. Monarch butterflies that overwinter in California rebounded, year over year, for example, and a small fish at the center of a pivotal Supreme Court case in the 1970s is now officially considered to have recovered.
But it was also a year of losses. In the US, wildlife officials formally declared almost two dozen species extinct. Meanwhile, environmental catastrophes, from severe drought in Arizona to oil spills in California, took countless animal lives.
Which is to say: Through the eyes of wildlife, 2021 was a year of highs and lows. Here are 11 kinds of animals that experienced these extremes; each of them teaches a lesson for us to carry into the new year.
We recognized octopuses, lobsters, and crabs as sentient beings
Octopuses seem to feel irritated with each other on occasion. Sometimes, females launch silt at males that won’t leave them alone, according to some scientists, and they’re also known to squirt ink at unsuspecting researchers when kept in a lab. But is that all they feel? Do the eight-armed creatures experience pain? Sadness? Happiness?
A report published this year in the UK found evidence to show that octopuses — as well as lobsters, crabs, and some other sea creatures known as decapods and cephalopods — are sentient. That means they have the capacity to have feelings, such as pleasure or pain. “A sentient being is ‘conscious’ in the most elemental, basic sense of the word,” the authors of the report, commissioned by the UK government, wrote.
Following the report, the animals joined an official list of sentient creatures that could get protection in the country under a new animal welfare bill. The Animal Welfare (Sentience) Bill, which is now under debate, could require all parts of the UK government to consider animal sentience when crafting policies. The bill had previously only recognized animals with backbones, known as vertebrates, as sentient beings.
“The Animal Welfare Sentience Bill provides a crucial assurance that animal well-being is rightly considered when developing new laws,” Lord Zac Goldsmith, the UK’s Animal Welfare Minister, said in November. “The science is now clear that decapods and cephalopods can feel pain and therefore it is only right they are covered by this vital piece of legislation.”
Scientists learned that endangered California condors can reproduce without a mate
If you’ve ever tried to hatch an egg from a carton in the refrigerator — guilty! — then you probably know it doesn’t work. One of the problems is that those eggs aren’t fertilized — that is, a rooster hasn’t inseminated the hen who laid them. No sperm, no baby birds. Right?
Not always. This fall, geneticists uncovered two cases where endangered California condors laid unfertilized eggs that hatched, producing chicks with genes that come only from their mother. It’s the first known case of what’s called “virgin birth,” or parthenogenesis, within the avian species. (As the Atlantic’s Sarah Zhang points out, the females that laid those eggs are not technically virgins because they had previously produced young with other males.)
The discovery was especially surprising because virgin births are rare among birds, and so far seen only in turkeys, finches, and domestic pigeons. It also suggests the phenomenon may be more common than scientists previously thought.
Parthenogenesis could potentially help some species recover from a decline in their population. California condors are threatened with extinction; there were just over 500 of them in 2020, up from a low of 23 in 1982. Yet there’s also evidence that some animals born through parthenogenesis — including the two condors — have health issues, such as stunted growth, Zhang writes.
The ivory-billed woodpecker was officially declared extinct
The year wasn’t as kind to one of the most charismatic and controversial animals in the US: the ivory-billed woodpecker. In September, the US Fish and Wildlife Service proposed to formally declare the bird extinct. It’s been decades since the last verifiable sighting of the species in the old-growth swamp forests of the southeastern US, the birds’ native habitat, although there is debate within the scientific community today over whether it is, indeed, gone for good. The government declared another 22 species extinct, as well, including the Bachman’s warbler and several kinds of freshwater mussels, based on the “best available scientific and commercial information.”
As we’ve previously reported, it’s hard to prove a species is extinct with 100 percent certainty. The ivory-billed woodpecker had become something of a poster child for “missing” species as habitat loss caused the crow-sized bird to decline. This made them increasingly rare and more difficult to spot. The government officially classifying the animal as extinct marks the end of an era.
We can try to learn something from these losses, and let them shape our approach to species preservation in the years ahead. Some scientists say we need to fundamentally rethink our hyper-focus on charismatic species like the ivory-billed woodpecker, because doing so diminishes a much larger scale of loss that’s flying under the scientific (and political) radar. It’s about paying attention to other metrics of loss — and also looking at what’s been gained.
“I’m a strong believer in flipping this on its head and really starting to talk about the positive stories,” Barney Long, senior director of conservation strategies at the nonprofit Re:wild, told Vox in September. Extinction is what we want to avoid, he added, “but what do we want to achieve?”
A once-famous fish recovered, proving environmental laws can rescue endangered species
In late August, the US Fish and Wildlife Service announced that a tiny fish called the snail darter — once threatened in rivers of the southeastern US — is no longer at risk of going extinct.
Despite its small size, the snail darter is a big deal. Named after the river snails it eats, the 3-inch fish became the center of a legal battle in the late 1970s that made it all the way to the Supreme Court.
It’s a long story, but here’s the gist: In 1975, the US government gave the fish protection under the then-new Endangered Species Act. At the time, a developer was constructing a dam that threatened the fish’s survival, so a small team of lawyers from the University of Tennessee sued the developer and the case advanced through the courts. The Supreme Court ruled in favor of the fish because it was protected under the Act, and stopped the construction. It was the first case to demonstrate the power of the Endangered Species Act.
“It may seem curious to some that the survival of a relatively small number of three-inch fish among all the countless millions of species extant would require the permanent halting of a virtually completed dam for which Congress has expended more than $100 million,” Chief Justice Warren Burger wrote in 1978. “We conclude, however, that the explicit provisions of the Endangered Species Act require precisely that result.”
After the Supreme Court ruling, Congress passed an amendment that exempted the dam from review under the Endangered Species Act, which President Jimmy Carter signed into law in 1979. The dam was completed shortly after. Nonetheless, over the next four decades, the fish recovered — thanks, in part, to efforts to relocate it to new, healthier areas. Today, there are at least 16 breeding populations of the fish, the government said.
Monarch butterflies rebounded in California
More than 200,000 Western monarch butterflies streamed into the California coastline this fall, where they’ll cluster in tall trees to ride out the winter. That’s up from less than 2,000 of the iconic butterflies that volunteers counted in California last year.
“This is the largest increase in a single year in terms of percentages,” Emma Pelton, senior conservation biologist for the Xerces Society for Invertebrate Conservation, told the Laguna Beach Independent in December. “Insect numbers bounce around and this is a bounce up.”
Monarchs make epic migrations each spring and fall, not unlike migratory birds. The butterflies that breed east of the Rocky Mountains travel to one patch of forest in Central Mexico — a journey of more than 2,000 miles — and those that live west of the range overwinter in California.
Over the last few decades, industrial farming and pesticides have decimated native milkweed, the only plants that monarch caterpillars can eat. That’s caused a steep decline in the number of butterflies that winter in California and Mexico.
Although millions of monarchs used to arrive in California each fall, this year’s tally is still an encouraging sign. It indicates that monarchs, like many insects, can recover quickly under the right conditions. “They lay hundreds of eggs,” Karen Oberhauser, a monarch expert and professor of entomology at the University of Wisconsin Madison, told Vox in December. “Good conditions can lead to quick increases in their numbers.”
Thousands of salmon died in marine heatwaves
For Pacific salmon, the year hit a boiling point.
The destruction of streams, over-fishing, and dams already threaten the fish across the western US, and drought and rising temperatures linked to climate change are only fueling the problem. Wildlife officials in California said they expected young Chinook salmon in the Sacramento River to face a “near-complete loss” because the water was simply too hot this summer. (Warm water can wreak havoc on the salmon immune system, making them more susceptible to disease, and can also cause birth defects by speeding up development.) This explains the state Fish & Wildlife Department’s plan to haul 17 million salmon in trucks, from spawning grounds to chillier coastal waters, in efforts to help the fish recover.
Meanwhile, sockeye salmon in the Columbia River “boiled alive” this summer when a record-setting heat wave raised the water temperature above the threshold that salmon can endure. Thousands of Chinook salmon in Washington State also fell victim to a bacteria that thrives in heat. (Hundreds of people across the Pacific Northwest and Canada died in the heat waves, in addition to more than an estimated 1 billion marine animals.)
The situation is now so dire for salmon that scientists are running out of fish to study. “We’re at the point with some populations where we have to be hands-off” and not take any, Steven Cooke, a biologist at Carleton University in Ottawa, told Hakai Magazine earlier this month. “We don’t want to study them to extinction.”
Not all salmon are in decline, however, and many people and tribes are working to help those that are. Indigenous communities in Alaska are banding together to help wild salmon, as High Country News reported. Declining salmon populations in the Klamath River have prompted Yurok tribal elders to work “to restore the river and reclaim Indigenous food sovereignty,” as the Guardian reported. And in June, a major legal victory came down in favor of Alaska Native corporation protecting its land, including sockeye habitat. The ruling goes against a large proposed gold mine project that tribes say would threaten the salmon grounds.
More than 1,000 manatees died in Florida
It was a very bad year for the Florida manatee: The state lost more than 1,000 of its torpedo-shaped sea cows, the largest annual toll on record. The previous record of 830 was set in 2013.
State officials blame the record deaths largely on the loss of seagrass, the animals’ main food source. Runoff from farming and sewage, and some natural factors like ocean currents, can fuel explosions of algae close to shore, soaking up oxygen and preventing sunlight from reaching the beds of grass. Without enough grass to eat, manatees, which are a threatened species, can starve to death.
Some toxic algal blooms, known as red tides, can kill manatees more directly. Over the summer, a particularly nasty red tide on the state’s Gulf coast killed thousands of fish and more than a dozen manatees, as Vox reported.
This winter, federal and state wildlife officials will try their hand at something unconventional — and controversial — in an attempt to save the starving animals: feeding manatees that winter on Florida’s east coast leafy greens, such as lettuce and cabbage.
Biden struck down a Trump-era rule that could have imperiled the northern spotted owl
Days before leaving office in January, former President Donald Trump finalized a rule to strip protection from 3.4 million acres of forest in the Pacific Northwest, home to northern spotted owls. The owl is threatened with extinction and protected under the Endangered Species Act. And for decades, the species has been at the heart of a conflict between the timber industry and wildlife advocates.
The Biden administration struck down the policy this summer and replaced it with a new rule that eliminates protection from just over 200,000 acres. In other words, the owl got back most of the protected forest it would have lost under the Trump rule.
“It defied logic, not to mention biology, to eliminate 3.4 million acres of protected habitat for this charismatic species,” Susan Jane Brown, wildlands and wildlife program director at the Western Environmental Law Center, said in a statement when the Biden administration finalized the rule. “Owls are so imperiled that endangered status is appropriate; it only makes sense to return essential protections to owl habitat.”
The logging industry, by contrast, has argued that these owls don’t live across the whole range of protected land and that thinning and managing forests is necessary to prevent wildfires, as the Guardian reported. In an analysis of the rule, the paper added, Biden administration officials said that commercial logging doesn’t lessen the risk of severe fires. The officials also claimed that the Trump ruling was based on faulty science.
Montana and Idaho passed laws that allow hunters to kill more wolves
After making one of the most famous recoveries of any endangered species in North America, the gray wolf suffered a few major setbacks in 2021. Idaho and Montana both passed a suite of bills that make it easier for hunters to kill more wolves, such as by allowing them to use a wider variety of hunting tactics. Meanwhile, Wisconsin authorized the killing of 300 gray wolves — far above the number that the state’s own biologists recommended. (The state-mandated hunt, which was set for the fall, is now on hold, however, pending the results of a handful of lawsuits.) And earlier in the year, hunters killed at least 216 of Wisconsin's wolves in less than 60 hours.
A key argument behind the bills in Idaho and Montana is that wolves are killing too many game species like elk and deer, which people like to hunt. But in Montana, at least, this isn’t true, as Vox’s reporting shows. Parks department data doesn’t indicate that hoofed wildlife populations in the state are stressed by wolves. “The numbers don’t add up,” Jennifer Sherry, an environmental scientist and wildlife advocate at the nonprofit Natural Resources Defense Council, told Vox in April. “Elk numbers are consistently strong across the state.” So, too, are deer and elk hunter success rates, Sherry said.
Western lawmakers passed the anti-wolf bills not long after the Trump administration removed gray wolves from the federal Endangered Species List in the fall of 2020. (In much of the northern Rocky Mountains, including in Idaho and Montana, officials had already removed the animal from the list years prior.) Wildlife groups are now fighting to get the wolf federal protection once more, and they’ve already had some success. In the fall, the Interior Department said it will review the animal’s status under the Endangered Species Act.
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