On August 19, 2006, I stood on the shore of Lake Onondaga near Syracuse, New York. The lake is a sacred place for the Onondaga Nation—it was once beautiful, now a Superfund site. Opposite us was a barren wasteland, the wetlands and meadows converted to a dump for the toxic by-products of industry. Author and plant ecologist Dr. Robin Wall Kimmerer of the Potawatomi people had been asked to speak; her voice was strong and compelling, her words powerful. She told us to look across the lake at the opposite shore—not soil, she said, but a sticky mass of calcium carbonate, industrial waste.
“When Allied Chemical slurried their waste into the lake and onto the shore, some said they were making new land,” Robin told us. “But it isn’t new land at all, it’s our old land, our homeland, ground up, poisoned . . . and dumped over a lakeshore meadow that was full of frogs and herons, muskrats and grasses and turtles.” She described what it was like now. “I’ve seen the ground seeping salt so strong it crystallizes over the pools like ice in August. I’ve seen . . . the bleached skeletons of trees—and skulls of deer.”
She paused, looking at us. “The mercury and the organic contaminants have transformed one of the world’s most sacred places into the nation’s most contaminated lake. What was the mind-set that said it was okay to do this? I feel I need to know that, I need to understand—so it won’t happen again.”
She went on to describe how plants are our first teachers. Little by little, plants were bringing back life to dead, barren, and polluted ground. “Over there, although you can see the hand of destruction, I think you can also see hope. In the way a seed lands in a tiny crack and puts down a root. Most of the plants die but some are strong enough to survive.”
When Robin stopped talking, we were very quiet. A weak sun came through the clouds, and the water of the lake reflected the soft light. I thought of what she had said. What was the mind-set that would tolerate the despoiling of such a beautiful and sacred place? How is it that people sit back and tolerate such desecration, such a brutal attack on the natural world? Indeed, the pollution of our streams, rivers, lakes, and oceans is one of the more shocking outcomes of the use of chemicals in agriculture, industry, household products, golf courses, and gardens, since much of this poison is washed into the water; even the great aquifers are often polluted. Yet there is some glimmer of hope.
I remember when the River Thames in London seemed beyond hope—a lifeless, contaminated, muddy body of water. Fifty years ago, the Potomac River passed through Washington, DC, stinking like a sewer; many other major waterways were in much the same state. Lake Erie was declared a fire hazard at one time, and the Cuyahoga River actually went up in flames and blazed for at least two days! Of course, most species of flora and fauna vanished from such contaminated waters.
Today, however, many of these rivers and lakes have been cleaned up—often at huge expense—and much of the wildlife has returned. A couple of years ago, for example, bass fishing opened up in the Potomac, a clear indication of much cleaner water. Fish are thriving in at least parts of Lake Erie. And fish are back in the River Thames where waterbirds, once more, are breeding.
Cleaning the Hudson River
The population of shortnose sturgeon, the first fish to be listed as endangered in 1972, lives in large rivers and estuaries along the Atlantic coast of North America where, obviously, the water was once horribly polluted. But over the past fifteen years, the population of the fish in the Hudson River, next to one of the busiest cities in the world, has increased by more than 400 percent. The Manhattan area has the most urban estuary on the planet; the cleaning of its waters is a conservation success story. “And it shows,” says Mark Bain of Cornell University, “that it is not necessary to depend on hatcheries in order to restock a river. If you protect the spawning grounds the fish will rebound.”
Now Congress has charged the US Army Corps of Engineers to improve the bottom topography, shorelines, and adjacent wetlands of the Hudson-Raritan Estuary, a system of bays and tidal rivers that surrounds New York City and embraces northern New Jersey’s shoreline, and the area where the Hudson, Hackensack, Passaic, and Raritan Rivers meet the ocean. Bain and his colleagues at Cornell are working on a plan to introduce “oyster reefs, shoreline wetlands in Harlem, public waterfront for small boats, bird-nesting islands, and thriving populations of striped bass and flounder.” He told me it is only possible to make such plans because the environment has been so much improved.
The Restoration of the Garcia River Basin and Watersheds
In 1993, the Garcia River in California, after years of lobbying by conservation groups, was listed on the Clean Water Act 303(d) list—the equivalent of the Endangered Species Act for rivers, lakes, and so on. It was the first time a river was listed due to contamination with fine sediment—the first time, that is, that fine sediment was recognized as a pollutant under the law.
When I spent two days walking in the redwood forests of Northern California with Mike Fay in spring 2008, I saw firsthand how the ecosystem had been affected by the commercial timber operations of the 1950s and 1960s. As a result of clear-cutting back then, fine sediments have washed down from the poorly planned logging roads; this has increasingly reduced the flow of water, making creeks wider, shallower, and warmer. (Of course, the water flow in many river basins of Northern California has also been adversely affected by water diversions and dams.)
One of the consequences has been the dramatic decline of the coho salmon. In the 1940s, the coho were so abundant in California rivers that their numbers were estimated at two hundred thousand to five hundred thousand statewide. And as recently as the 1970s, California’s coho fishery still pulled in more than seventy million dollars a year in revenue. But since 1994, commercial fishing for coho has been completely shut down; the fish is listed as both state and federally endangered.
Over the past few decades, a coalition of conservation partners, including landowners, industry, community activists, nonprofits, and regulators began working to monitor and restore the health of the Garcia watershed through sustainable timber management and responsible land stewardship. In 2004, The Conservation Fund, The Nature Conservancy, the California Coastal Conservancy, and the Wildlife Conservation Board partnered to purchase the 23,780-acre Garcia River Forest property (a third of the total watershed) with the goal of managing the property not only to protect significant natural and ecological resources but also for sustainable forestry. The Nature Conservancy purchased a conservation easement that among other things permanently protects the property from future subdivision and residential or vineyard development. The coalition is reducing sedimentation by upgrading the old logging roads and creating natural wood structures in the streams to improve the habitat for the coho salmon. Conservancy scientists hope to show that sustainable timber production not only can go hand in hand with maintaining the health of the environment, but can actually improve it.
This fall while snorkeling in the headwaters of the Garcia River, Jennifer Carah, a scientist with The Nature Conservancy, and Jonathan Warmerdam from the North Coast Regional Water Quality Control Board spotted juvenile coho salmon. “To our amazement, we found them eleven miles farther upstream than they had been seen before.” I read about this in the San Francisco Chronicle—I just happened to be in town. So I called Jennifer—and she told me that when she identified those young coho she “squealed so loudly that Jonathan heard the sound even though we were both underwater”!
Jennifer told me that they were spotted in five of the twelve sub-watersheds in the basin by Conservancy scientists and, and in a sixth sub-basin by the Mendocino Redwood Company. In many of these streams they had not been seen since the late 1990s, and in one sub-watershed they had never been seen before. It seems that the last decades of watershed management by local activists, agencies, private landowners, timber companies, and conservation groups have begun to pay off.
The Moapa Dace: How a Sardine-Size Fish Caused the Demolition of a Resort
All in the name of a small, finger-length endangered fish, a river system was restored—and a legendary resort was closed. The moapa dace (Moapa coriacea) was originally found throughout the headwaters of the Muddy River system in Nevada. Within its fragile habitat, a legendary resort called the Warm Springs Ranch was built—warm water from a deep carbonate aquifer bubbled to the surface at numerous places on this property, making it a hot springs heaven. Supposedly Howard Hughes once owned much of this 1,179-acre ranch, rumored to have been an all-nude tanning spot for Las Vegas showgirls! The warm carbonated waters continued to attract throngs of visitors, and the resort was built up with snack bars, tourist amenities, and a large chlorinated swimming pool.
During the 1960s, dace numbers declined due to not only habitat destruction but also competition with non-native species, especially the molly. In 1967, the moapa dace was federally listed as endangered, and to protect it, the US Fish and Wildlife Service purchased a small parcel of land to become the Moapa Valley National Wildlife Refuge. Which meant, among other things, that the resort would have to be closed.
A plan was developed to restore the chlorinated and damaged waterways. Other conservation organizations, including the Southern Nevada Water Authority (SNWA), also purchased land so that the springwaters could be protected and stream restoration initiated over a larger area.
I heard about the project from National Wildlife Refuge Manager Amy Sprunger. One of the first steps taken was to eliminate competing, non-native fish such as the molly, as well as the tilapia that had been illegally released into the system in 1992. Because the water was warm, locals would even dump their exotic, tropical fish into the springs once they got tired of caring for them. It was also necessary, as part of the restoration process, to remove thickets of non-native vegetation and to plant native trees. As Amy told me, “We literally demolished the impacted landscape and reconfigured everything to favor the dace.”
Eventually, the US Fish and Wildlife Service and the SNWA were able to purchase 95 percent of the moapa dace’s natural habitat. For a while there was a danger that further developments, outside the protected area, would affect the flow of water into this system. But now, Amy told me, the FWS and SNWA have signed an agreement that will force prospective developers to keep the water flow free of contaminants and at an adequate level.
Of course there was massive local resistance to turning a recreation destination into a natural habitat just because of a three-inch fish. One resident complained that her view was spoiled when several hundred non-native palm trees were cleared from refuge land across the road from her home. According to a newspaper report, other people argued that the imported palm trees were a species that evolved in North America and thus deserved to be protected just as much as the dace!
In January 2008, reporter Henry Brean in the Las Vegas Review–Journal wrote about the newly restored habitat. This elicited a variety of mostly hostile comments that, only too often, illustrated the ignorance of the local writers. Even the writer of the article asked, “So why all this effort to save an isolated fish barely big enough to make a decent pizza topping?”
In the end, after years of hard work, the newly restored refuge will be open to the public: the old Warm Springs Ranch transformed into the Warm Springs Natural Area. A highlight of the restoration effort is the specially constructed windows showcasing a cross section of a spring-fed stream. This way, visitors can get a unique, close-up look at the vibrant population of moapa dace swimming in the now clean and unpolluted water.
This project, Amy told me, was by far the most significant of her nineteen years with the FWS. “It has been the highlight of my career,” she said. “It wraps everything together, restoring habitat and saving an endangered species.”
I like to think of Amy watching the dace through the special viewing windows, with a smile on her face.
Restoring a Stream
A few years ago, wildlife teacher Tom Furrer invited me to visit the Casa Grande High School in Petaluma, California, to see for myself the success of a project that he had started with his students in 1983. Tom and the project leaders led me to the Adobe Creek, which runs through the school grounds. I saw clear water flowing between grassy, tree-lined banks. Hard to believe that fifteen years before it had been little more than a series of filthy pools, cluttered with trash, strung out between eroding, treeless banks. The steelheads (similar to rainbow trout) that once spawned upstream were almost extinct.
“When I first began talking about restoring the creek,” Tom told me, “people said I was deluding my students. They laughed and told me the place could never be restored.”
But the students rolled up their sleeves and went to work, pulling trash out of the water, planting trees, talking about the project to all who would listen. “It was hard going, back then,” said Tom. “All we had was heart.”
Clearly, heart was enough, for gradually their efforts began to pay off. The trees grew, grasses and other vegetation flourished in their shade, the soil of the banks stabilized. Impressed, people stopped dumping their trash in the creek, and the quality and quantity of the water improved. The students started a fund-raising campaign, built a hatchery, and, working with United Anglers, were successful in hatching steelhead fry. “And now,” Tom told me, “the wild population of steelhead has rebounded and is flourishing.”
Human-Made Wetlands
As people wake up to the horror of our polluted water, some very innovative projects are being developed to clean things up. Recently, in Taiwan, I visited the Lujiaoxi Wetland in Taipei County. This project was designed to clean the polluted waters of the Lujiaoxi Stream before it flows into the Dahan River by diverting it—some twelve hundred tons a day—through artificial wetland areas.
The governor of the county took me on a tour of this 148-acre wetland. First this water, heavily contaminated by domestic waste, flows through an area where pollution-resistant native vegetation has been planted to start the cleansing process. It was dark, dank, and lifeless there. We moved on to a second similar area where the water is further cleansed. Next came a third region of tall grasses; looking down, we could see that the water was very much cleaner. From there, now shining and somehow alive, a stream flowed between banks lined with a variety of native vegetation. We saw butterflies and other insects, and some birds. And finally we walked past the real wetlands area where many different kinds of birds were feeding. From there the clean water flows into the Dahan River.
The governor told me that construction had begun in January 2008; the birds began to return as soon as the wetland was flooded six months later. “And the thing is,” he said, “once it is set in motion, it carries on working by itself.”
Many groups of local schoolchildren visit to learn about the project and get involved in the maintenance of the area and monitoring the exciting developments as more and more creatures set up home there. Indeed, there were five groups of our Roots & Shoots children, from primary and high schools, who greeted us at each of the little education areas along the way, and explained the project.
The Dahan River is a tributary of the big Dunshui River, where, because of this influx of clean water along with other efforts to clean upstream waters, an endangered fish—the “monk goby,” as the governor called it—is now reestablishing itself.
There is a great deal more that could be written about the need to conserve and clean the waters of the world. Without water there is no life. Today we fight wars about oil but as Ismail Serageldin (then with the World Bank) said at the end of the last century: “The wars of the next century will be fought over water.” We could, with major changes in the way most people live today, survive without oil. We shall never be able to survive without fresh water to drink and grow our food.
Fortunately, we are beginning to understand. The looming threat of global water shortage has been acknowledged. And many of the stories in our book and on this website describe the efforts of those who are fighting against the reckless use of water for agriculture, industry, and domestic use, the pollution of rivers and lakes, the draining of the wetlands, and so on. They are heroes indeed.
