Innehållsförteckning för Fall 2020 från Audubon Magazine

Streams & Wetlands ROLLBACK: The Trump administration’s new interpretation of the Clean Water Act says landowners and businesses no longer need a permit to pollute or fill many wetlands and streams. The change could yield widespread destruction of habitat for at-risk birds, from the Everglades to desert arroyos in the West. PUSHBACK: Lawsuits from states, tribes, and conservation groups claim the EPA and Army Corps of Engineers ignored science and failed to explain the reasoning for the rule. Environmental Reviews ROLLBACK: An overhaul of the National Environmental Policy Act significantly constrains the studies of environmental impacts required before permitting big infrastructure projects, allowing agencies to ignore climate change and limit public input. PUSHBACK: Multiple coalitions of conservation groups, which include Audubon, sued the administration, arguing its changes aren’t justified and…

MELBOURNE suffered an unprecedented drought from 1997 to 2009 and decided to lower its temperature. In 2012 the Australian city launched a plan that included growing its canopy, from 22 to 40 percent by 2040, and setting biodiversity goals—no more than 5 percent of its forest can be of the same species. Today the city is a worldclass example of urban-forest management. SAN FRANCISCO completed its urban forestry plan in 2014. But two years later, it was still struggling to keep newly planted trees alive, especially in low-income neighborhoods. So, in 2016, voters approved a measure that transferred all tree-care responsibilities back to the city. With a public database of some 125,000 city trees that is constantly updated, workers know when a tree needs to be pruned, maintained, removed, or…

THE WORLD’S LARGEST SET OF LANDS DEDICATED TO PRESERVING wildlife started with a five-acre scrap of sand and guano. In 1903, to protect a raucous rookery of Brown Pelicans from poachers, President Theodore Roosevelt designated Florida’s Pelican Island as the first unit of what would become the National Wildlife Refuge System. Since then the network has grown to 568 refuges spanning 95 million acres. More than 200 of them were designated specifically to safeguard places where birds overwinter or rest and refuel during migration, including birding hotspots such as Cape May, in New Jersey, and Santa Ana, in Texas. Some 59 million people visited a refuge last year. Amid so much natural beauty, it’s likely that few noticed anything amiss. Those intimately familiar with these sanctuaries, however, discern a harsher…

AS THIS ISSUE WENT TO PRESS, wildfires raged across California—new ones igniting even as firefighters raced to contain others. Some 1.5 million acres had already burned, and the toll on communities ablaze while grappling with COVID-19 was incalculable. Wildlife, too, faced consequences unknown. Biologists had just finished surveying the California population of federally threatened Marbled Murrelets when lightning touched off fires near Santa Cruz—fires that then tore through the old-growth forest where the seabirds fly to lay a single egg each spring. Whether enough tree canopy will be spared, or whether it will recover in time, to support the vulnerable birds next breeding season is an open question. That’s also the question at the heart of “Trial by Fire” (page 20), this issue’s cover story. Scientists in Australia have been…

IN 1986 BIRDERS IN WESTERN North Carolina formed an Audubon chapter named after Elisha Mitchell, a 19th-century conservationist. The East Coast’s highest peak also bears his name. Decades later, on a Friday this June, chapter president Nancy Casey opened an email from a member and learned that Mitchell was also a slaveholder. Quick research further revealed he wrote a book defending the disgraceful institution. Fourteen hours and many frenzied calls later, she announced the chapter would change its name. “This isn’t about erasing history,” says Casey, now leader of Blue Ridge Audubon. “This is about understanding that these types of things can hurt people today.” The decision came amid a new wave of reckoning with the white supremacy, systemic racism, and colonialism that shaped this nation’s past and persists today.…

On a late spring morning in October, in a spotted gumironbark forest he describes as “dry as toast,” BirdLife Australia’s Mick Roderick and I are on the lookout for Regent Honeyeaters. While the area we walk has thus far avoided total ruin from cataclysmic bushfires, the tinder-dry leaves beneath our boots send the clear and crackling message: This could all go up in a flash, and with it the future of one of the country’s most iconic woodland birds. We met earlier near a billboard that features a worn, discolored map offering these grounds as investment property. But the real value, Roderick says, is found in the diverse ecosystem that has built up over millennia in this 3.4-square-mile remnant of Lower Hunter Valley woodland in eastern Australia. Away from the…

ON A SPRING DAY IN 2019, IN A SMALL CAVE TUCKED INTO A MASSIVE cliff in Zion National Park, a California Condor chick pecked its way free of its enormous egg. In the first days after the young bird emerged, its parents took turns cuddling their baby just as condors have done for tens of thousands of years. But this birth was anything but ordinary. That little bundle of fluff taking its first teetering steps on unsteady legs was the 1,000th chick born to the California Condor Recovery Program. When the recovery program began, in the early 1980s, only 22 condors remained in the world. Back then the prospect of reaching this milestone was unimaginable, recalls biologist Jan Hamber. “At the time, so much was unknown about the species. And…

AS ANY PARENT WHOSE toddler has mastered an iPad knows, kids gravitate to gadgets. Cameras hold the same allure while offering more enduring value: the chance to engage with real-world subjects, including nature and wildlife. As they practice their shots, they’ll learn the art of slowing down and refine their powers of observation. They may even develop a lifelong love of birds—and a passion to protect them and their environment. New Life Have unused camera gear? The nonprofits Girls Who Click and Conservation Kids teach youth wildlife photography workshops at no cost, and donated equipment can help support or expand their work. (Visit their sites for details.) Consider also sending used binoculars to Optics for the Tropics or offering them to education programs at a local Audubon center or chapter.…

BLACK-BILLED MAGPIES CHARMED ILLUSTRATOR LAUREN TAMAKI AS A KID GROWING UP IN CALGARY, where their distinctive long-tailed silhouettes punctuated the tidy lawns of her suburban neighborhood. When she watched videos of the corvids to refresh her memory, she was struck by the flash of white markings against their oily plumes. “They’re even more beautiful than I remember.” Tamaki pencil-sketched various postures before crafting her final composition in acrylic ink. Portraying one bird in flight, as John James Audubon did, would highlight the species’ patterning, Tamaki decided, but she wanted to capture a “scrappy aspect” she noticed in magpie behavior. Head extended, wings thrust back, her second bird prances through the suggestion of snow as the duo exchange squiggles of avian chatter. Indeed, Black-billed Magpies are quite vocal, typically calling a…

WHEN RACHEL MALARICH was 10 years old growing up in San Jose, California, her parents gave her a shovel and asked her to plant several small purple leaf plums and baby Chinese pistaches. She dug the holes and took care of the trees until she left for college. Malarich is still planting trees 26 years later, only today she is cultivating the future of one of the bigger urban forests in the United States. In August 2019 Mayor Eric Garcetti appointed her the first-ever forest officer of Los Angeles, making her a small but key part of the city's climate plan. Many cities, from Chicago to Detroit to Phoenix, have managed their green canopies for decades. At first, strategies mostly focused on ensuring trees didn’t damage sidewalks, pipes, and buildings.…