At an open house hosted by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service to gather input on the possible reintroduction of sea otters to parts of their historical range from the Bay Area to Oregon, a phrase repeated often was the process was still "on the ground floor."The informal Sunday event on the Cal Poly Humboldt campus — one of 16 to take place in West Coast coastal communities from Astoria to Emeryville — saw USFW staff, including sea otter experts, manning a series of tables with presentations on everything from the endangered species' biology and role as a keystone species to previous reintroduction efforts and potential socio-economic effects on local communities, as well as next steps.While the staff was there to answer questions, one of the key points of the sessions, they said, was to listen and take in feedback as the service begins the information-gathering portion of an extensive process that will be years in the works before any decision on whether to proceed is made."We are interested in hearing a range of perspectives," said Lilian Carswell, USFW's southern sea otter recovery and marine conservation coordinator, adding that includes people's thoughts on reintroduction and their concerns, especially on the socio-economic front. "We are way at the beginning and we want to hear from people and really want to understand their perspectives."Read More
Sea otters, which hunt shellfish, crab and kelp-devouring sea urchins, are at the top of the kelp-forest food chain. Without otters, those ecosystems have been slowly degrading, and in 2013 they hit a catastrophic tipping point: A mysterious disease — possibly triggered by warming ocean temperatures — caused a continent-spanning die-off of sea stars, which had filled otters’ role as the top predator of sea urchins. Unchecked, urchins proliferated, causing the widespread collapse of kelp forests: In Northern California, they’ve shrunk by more than 90%, replaced by urchin-filled barrens. Researchers believe reintroducing sea otters may be one of the only ways to save what’s left.The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service announced in an assessment published last month that returning sea otters to Oregon and Northern California is feasible and would also bring likely — if unequal — economic benefits. Scientists and tribal leaders say reintroducing otters would restore balance to degraded kelp forests, boost fish species, protect shorelines, generate tourist dollars and even capture carbon. But concerns remain in communities where otters would compete with humans for shellfish, and among some tribes that fear their self-governance is also at stake. The feasibility assessment is the latest step in a reintroduction effort championed by Oregon’s Elakha Alliance, an otter conservation nonprofit founded by tribal members and scientists. Peter Hatch, a member of the Confederated Tribes of Siletz Indians and an Elakha Alliance board member, said their significance to ecosystems and tribes drives the organization’s work. Though generations have passed since otters were hunted to near extinction, many places still bear their name in tribal languages. Stories about them depict a relationship that epitomizes the interconnections between humans and the rest of the natural world.One site likely to be considered is near Port Orford in southern Oregon, where one of the few remaining large kelp forests offers ideal habitat. The area is a stop on the Run to the Rogue, an annual 234-mile relay that retraces the Siletz Tribes’ forced relocation. When Oregon and the federal government removed families from the area more than 150 years ago, Peter Hatch said, sea otters were still present. Today, the relay is an important act of remembrance, community and homecoming.“Bringing sea otters back to our ancestral lands is a different kind of homecoming,” Hatch said. “I look forward to the day when we’ll be celebrating in Port Orford and be able to see the sea otters out in the water, as the folks from there always had been able to.”Read More
More than 5,200 toxic sites buried along the shore of San Francisco Bay could be impacted by rising groundwater levels over the next century, posing potentially severe risks to human and environmental health, according to a recently released study.
That’s more than 10 times as many potentially at-risk Bay Area sites as had been identified in previous reports. A disproportionate number are located in lower-income communities of color, including in low-lying areas of San Francisco, Richmond, West Oakland and East Palo Alto.
Unlike much lower tallies from the federal and state agencies that oversee these sites, Hill’s study includes 1,480 open sites, which are in the process of being cleaned up or have not yet been cleaned up, as well as an additional 3,817 closed sites where some level of cleanup work may have been conducted, but that may still contain residual contaminants and be vulnerable to rising groundwater.
“It’s like a graveyard,” said Kristina Hill, director of UC Berkeley’s Institute of Urban and Regional Development, who co-authored the study. “Everything we’ve done in the past is coming up with that groundwater to haunt us in the present.” The two state agencies in charge of enforcing cleanup of the sites, Hill said, need “to flip a switch” to the default goal of removing or neutralizing contaminants.“It’s a solvable problem. But it requires us to dig up the graves,” she said, emphasizing the need to consider rising groundwater levels in future climate adaptation plans.“The idea is not to run away from these places,” she added. “The idea is to make them safe and healthy again.”Cleanup of toxic sites can range from digging up contaminants and trucking debris to contained locations, treating toxics directly on-site, or capping the pollutants in the ground with materials like cement to prevent them from leaking. That third option, Hill said, is likely not a good long-term solution because groundwater rise will generally circumvent barriers over time.Read More
Rising seas and hammering waves could radically transform California beaches by the end of the century, with 25% to 70% of the state’s beaches eroding completely, according to a USGS study that that incorporates historic rates of coastal erosion and projections for sea level rise and future wave heights. “What people don’t realize is it’s now: We’re losing our beaches now,” said Donne Brownsey, chair of the California Coastal Commission, the agency in charge of securing public access to coastal areas. The Coastal Commission encourages cities to avoid what’s called “armoring” — building seawalls or using rip-rap to protect seaside homes and infrastructure, because such hard structures cause beaches to erode more quickly. “The community needs to be aware — if you choose this option it’s going to accelerate the erosion of your beach,” Brownsey said.Unfortunately, 14% of the entire coast, and 38% of Southern California’s, has already been armored.Alternatives to armoring include natural options like restoring sand dunes and the more expensive choice called managed retreat, or moving infrastructure out of harm’s way. As an example, Caltrans just finished construction on a $26 million project to move Highway 1 by Bodega Bay’s Gleason Beach 400 feet inland and away from eroding cliffs.“With many locations in California, the whole point is being there for the beach,” said Amy Hutzel, executive officer of California State Coastal Conservancy, an agency that funds projects to combat sea level rise. Hutzel noted that because one-fourth of the coast is managed by the state park system, the state has the authority to make similar changes on a large part of the coast. “We don’t want to save the parking lot at the very expense of the place people want to visit.”Critics say Gov. Gavin Newsom’s decision to cut $6 billion (out of $54 billion) from climate spending in the state budget, which includes reducing the allocation for coastal resilience this year by $561 million compared with what was spent in 2021 and 2022, could make the state’s climate goals harder to achieve. Communities within San Francisco Bay alone will need $110 billion to protect against sea level rise, according to a recent economic study by the Bay Conservation and Development Commission.“I don’t think that we are acting quickly enough,” said Mandy Sackett, California policy coordinator of Surfrider Foundation, which works to preserve beaches. Read More
Southern sea otters once lived across California, including Humboldt Bay. Now, only about 3,000 live along the coast of the state.The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service conducted a feasibility assessment in 2022 about reintroducing the animal along the coast and found an effort to bring the species further north to be legal, with a positive socioeconomic and biological impact. The USFWS will host a meeting Sunday in Arcata to collect public input on the issue. “Sea otters have this beautiful, thick pelt, and that’s why they were just totally wiped out,” said Emily Jeffers, a senior attorney at the Center for Biological Diversity, an organization that formally submitted a petition in January asking the UFSWS to move ahead with reintroduction. She said the current population of southern sea otters in California came from a group of around 50, found near Monterey Bay after European settlers decimated populations in the 1700s and 1800s.While reintroduction efforts in the 1960s and 1970s were successful in Washington, the southern sea otter didn’t take in Northern California or Oregon.Jennifer Kalt, director of Humboldt Baykeeper, said in Humboldt County, there have been some reports of visiting sea otters, but none have made a home along the North Coast of California. She said that Russian trappers who enslaved Indigenous people from what is now Alaska decimated the population locally.Jeffers said sea otters are keystone species — they eat sea urchins and keep the population in check. Otters could play a part in the restoration of local kelp forests because urchins have been eating a lot of kelp.“The kelp ecosystem is so out of balance now — we know the importance of the kelp forest for abalone, but also for all kinds of juvenile fish,” said Kalt.The abalone, which has great historic significance for people across the coast, has been hit hard, with the Northern California recreational red abalone fishery being closed since 2017.Read More
