Gray wolf. Photo: Jeffrey St. Clair.

Back in 2000, I wrote a piece for California Wild about the prospects for wolf restoration in the state. At that time, there had not been any wolves reported in the Golden State in decades. Nevertheless, I felt the state could easily support a wolf population.

In my article, I pretended that it was 2020, and I am sitting on a mountaintop in the Marble Mountains, hearing a wolf howl. It is interesting to reread the article and see that most of the predictions have been realized.

A recent article in the Los Angles Times documents that there are now at least 70 wolves in California in nine packs. Most of the parks are located in northern California, but at least one pack is found in the southern Sierra Nevada east of Bakersfield.

The first recorded wolf in California occurred 13 years ago when a wolf from northeastern Oregon known as OR-7 ventured into the Golden State . OR-7 went on to form a pack in southern Oregon.

A state conservation wolf plan suggests that California could support as many as 500 wolves north of I-80, which bisects the state from San Francisco to Lake Tahoe.I Interestingly study done by the Conservation Science Institute in the 1990s suggested thata population of 440 wolves was possible.

MY 2000 ARTICLE FROM CALIFORNIA WILD

Some biologists question whether early accounts of wolves in California might be skewed by the misidentification of coyotes, common throughout the state. The coyote is smaller and has a narrower build than its cousin the wolf.

July 17, 2020. “Here I am in the Marble Mountains. Just about dusk a beautiful yellow harvest moon rose over Elk Mountain. As the moon cleared the ragged tops of the forest, I heard a wolf howl.”

In the not too distant future, such a journal entry may be a reality, not just wishful thinking. Though wolves were extirpated from California nearly 80 years ago, the animals may soon be trotting back to the Golden State.

The earliest historical records mention wolves throughout much of California. For instance, Pedro Fages, who traveled the Coast Ranges from San Diego north to San Francisco in 1769 recorded the occurrence of both wolves and coyotes along his route. Other sightings place wolves along the coast near San Gabriel Mission, in Humboldt County, and in the Monterey Bay area.

The explorer and mapmaker John Fremont noted seeing wolves in the Sacramento Valley. After the gold rush of 1848, wolf sightings shifted to the Sierra Nevada and northern California. John Muir reports having seen wolves near Mount Shasta. Nevertheless, the only confirmed wolves found in the state were trapped in the 1920s. Three specimens of gray wolves are in the Museum of Vertebrate Zoology at the University of California at Berkeley. One was taken in the Providence Mountains in southern California, and the other two were caught in Modoc and Lassen counties in northern California.

Ron Jurek, a wildlife biologist with the California Department of Fish and Game in Sacramento, has studied most of the early historical accounts related to wolves and cautions about speculating too broadly about their historical occurrence in the state. For instance, Jurek points out, many early travelers failed to distinguish between coyote and wolf sightings, collectively calling both “wolves.” Secondly, says Jurek, the only undisputed records of wolves for the state are the three museum specimens collected in the 1920s. They were all males who could have been long-distance dispersers from breeding populations elsewhere. There are, he says, no undisputed records of actual wolf breeding in the state although some historical accounts do mention the capture of pups. Despite his skepticism, Jurek acknowledges that some wolves lived in California. If they hadn’t been here, it would be a mystery since there was good wolf habitat, an abundance of prey such as elk, antelope, and deer, and well-documented wolf populations in Oregon. There is no physical boundary at the Oregon border that would have kept breeding populations out.

However many Californian wolves there once were, none survived the eradication efforts that began with the first European settlers on the continent. Ten years after the founding of Plymouth Bay Colony in Massachusetts, a wolf bounty was enacted. Settlers were admonished to use restraint with their guns, with two exceptions. “The order of the General Court, subsequently, that whoever shall shoot off a gun on any unnecessary occasion, or at any game except at an Indian or a wolf, shall forfeit five shillings for every shot.”

The situation didn’t change much as the new Americans moved west. The first political actions taken in Oregon Territory were the so-called wolf meetings, held in 1843 to organize a means of taxing settlers to pay for the enactment of a wolf bounty in the state.

By the turn of the century, with strong support from the livestock industry, the extirpation of wolves became federal policy with the U.S. government paying bounties to trappers to systematically hunt down the last surviving lobos in the West. The devotion to eliminating the last wolves was almost maniacal, with trappers pursuing individual wolves for six months to a year. Even national parks were not immune from the wolf slaughter; the last wolves in Yellowstone were killed by the 1930s.

Though many critics of wolf restoration acknowledge that wolves once lived in California, they suggest there is insufficient habitat in the state for them today. However, an ongoing study by Carlos Carroll, at the Klamath Center for Conservation Research, along with Reed Noss (Conservation Science Incorporated) and Paul Paquet (World Wildlife Fund), calls this assumption into question. Their research suggests that wolves could indeed inhabit California and adjacent areas of Oregon. Using prey (primarily deer) density, road density, and human population density as variables, Carroll and his colleagues did a preliminary analysis of northern California and southern Oregon to determine habitat suitability for wolves. They identified four areas with high-quality wolf habitat: the Modoc Plateau in northeast California, the Lost Coast!Yolla Bolly area of the northern California Coast Ranges, the southern Oregon Cascades, and the Northern Kalmiopsis/Oregon coast on the California-Oregon border. Carroll estimates that together these four areas could support at least 440 wolves. His calculations did not include elk. “When elk numbers are added in to the prey availability, we expect the number of wolves that could be supported will be higher,” he says.

Carroll points out that these core areas tend to be about half the size of the wolf recovery areas found in Idaho and Wyoming. However, the California and Oregon areas have higher year-round prey density (it’s non-migratory, unlike most prey in the Rockies) with plenty of lower elevation winter habitat in public land ownership or private timber holdings, not ranches. So there is less potential conflict with livestock operations. Since the core areas are smaller, however, “linking these areas with corridors would be a critical factor in increasing the long-term sustainability of resident wolf populations,” says Carroll.

Bob Ferris, a biologist with Defenders of Wildlife, agrees. “Most of the prey is going to be deer. And deer densities, at least in some parts of northern California, are very high,” Ferris says. “Since pack territory is determined somewhat by prey density and average prey size, we can expect smaller territories and smaller packs than, say, wolves feeding on moose scattered about Alaska’s relatively unproductive boreal forest areas. This will enable wolves to fit more readily into the smaller habitat patches found in California,” he predicts.

The best potential wolf habitat in northern California is nearly uninhabited by people. Human population density in Del Norte, Siskiyou, Lassen, Humboldt, Trinity, Modoc, and other northern California counties is actually far lower than the currently occupied wolf habitat in Montana, Minnesota, Michigan, and Wisconsin–all states where wolf populations are recovering. Minnesota, for instance, has more than 2,500 wolves, far more than the 440-plus wolves Carroll and his colleagues are predicting for California.

And wolves don’t necessarily require wilderness to survive–as long as people don’t shoot them. This past winter, a pack of wolves set up housekeeping several miles from downtown Jackson, Wyoming, creating quite a tourist spectacle. People sat inside roadside cafes sipping coffee while they watched wolves bring down elk across the road.

There is plenty of prey and wolf-worthy habitat between northern California and wolf populations in Montana and Idaho. While there are biological reasons to believe that wolf recovery in California is feasible, “the restoration of wolves is as much a political as biological question,” says Roy Heberger, assistant field supervisor in the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service’s (USFWS) Snake River Basin Office in Idaho. Wolf supporters like Defenders’s Ferris believe that California politics are favorable for wolf restoration. Compared to states like Wyoming and Idaho that have many anti-wolf legislators, California’s congressional delegation includes such staunch supporters of the Endangered Species Act as Senator Barbara Boxer and Congressman George Miller, who Ferris expects would look favorably upon California wolf restoration.

Patrick Valentino, executive director of the Julian Wolf Preserve just northeast of San Diego, has already launched a public education program aimed at creating a favorable political climate for wolves–if and when they return to the state. Teaming up with Defenders of Wildlife, Valentino’s organization has a traveling wolf education booth that provides information at county fairs and other public events. According to Valentino, the overwhelming response of people to the prospect of wolf reintroduction is “very favorable.” This is not surprising in urban southern California, but some suspect the reception will be less welcoming in northern rural areas where wolves are likely to roam.

Marcia Armstrong, executive director of the Siskiyou County Cattleman’s Association and Siskiyou County Farm Bureau in Yreka is one such rural resident. She responds indignantly to the suggestion that wolves be restored to California. “Those people who want wolves should have to live with them. Instead, they impose these animals on us people living in the rural West while they get to live in the safety of their cities. They want to make our home into an outdoor zoo to placate their suburban guilt complex over how they have destroyed the wildlife habitat where they live.”

Rancher Shawn Curtis, director of the Modoc County Farm Bureau, has already talked with ranchers in Idaho about the impact of wolves upon their operations. One of their major concerns is compensation for livestock losses. Although Defenders of Wildlife will pay for any wolf-related livestock losses, Curtis says the system doesn’t work well on the ground. “You have to practically see a wolf attacking your animals before you can get compensation. Given the way that livestock is run in the West, it’s very difficult to find a calf that has been killed before other scavengers destroy the evidence. That’s not really acceptable from our standpoint.”

Wolf defenders like Brooks Fahy, who runs the Predator Defense Institute in Eugene, Oregon, believe much of the conflict between livestock operators and predators is self-created. “If ranchers implemented better husbandry practices that minimized predator opportunity such as the use of guard dogs, herders, and calving barns, the losses to predators would be significantly reduced,” he said. “These kinds of things should be a standard cost of operation for them. Instead, western ranchers have externalized one of their costs on to the public by eliminating most of the large predators in the West.”

But to Armstrong, the real reason for opposing wolf restoration is safety. “I don’t want to have to worry for my life when I take out the garbage or for the safety of my daughter who likes to jog on rural roads. You have to remember, the wolf once had a bounty on it. It’s a vicious predator. It’s not cute and cuddly,” Armstrong says. “Wolves kill animals, and we are animals. They won’t distinguish between species.”

Ferris acknowledges that a vocal minority among rural residents will always oppose wolf restoration. He is quick, however, to cite polls in Montana, Idaho, and Wyoming, all far more rural in nature than California, that show a majority of residents support wolf restoration efforts. And another recent poll taken in Oregon this past spring came to the same conclusion: most of the state’s citizens, even in rural areas, support wolf restoration in their state. Indeed, the only group that consistently opposes wolf restoration is livestock producers.

If Armstrong has her way, there never will be wild wolves in California. The Siskiyou County Cattleman’s Association is working on legislation that would ban any attempts to restore wolves to the state, she says.

There are two main ways wolves could find themselves back in California, says Valentino. The first is capture and release: capturing wolves elsewhere and releasing them in California. This was the method used to bring wolves back to Idaho and Yellowstone. One advantage of reintroduction, says Valentino, is that you can “select areas with lower human conflicts than
might otherwise occur if wolves simply come back to California on their own four feet.” Valentino strongly supports such a planned reintroduction, but he acknowledges that it is unlikely to occur any time soon.

The second scenario is more probable; wolves from elsewhere may come to California on their own. According to Bob Ferris, more than 65 percent of Idaho’s wolves will be of dispersal age by this coming winter. “It’s almost a certainty that within a few years at least some of these wolves will find their way to Oregon, and later move into California,” he says.

Wolves are long-distance migrants. Mollie Matteson, a research biologist at the University of Montana who studied them, says there are documented cases of wolves moving hundreds, even thousands of miles. One wolf captured near Montana’s Glacier National Park was later killed outside of Dawson City, British Columbia–nearly 450 miles further north. She notes that it’s only 275 miles from Idaho’s occupied wolf territory to northeast California.

It doesn’t take a determined wolf long to cover the miles, either.

Theoretically, a wolf could move from Idaho to California in less than a week. Heberger tells of one wolf captured in Montana. It was released more than 100 air miles away only to be rediscovered back in the original capture site less than 48 hours later.

More likely, wolves will establish themselves in Oregon before coming to California. Such a scenario was givengreater credence last winter after a radio-collared female Idaho wolf, dubbed B-45 by the usfws, migrated across the Snake River into eastern Oregon. The discovery of a live wolf in Oregon for the first time in more than 50 years took everyone by surprise. Local · ranchers and some state officials demanded she be removed immediately, while wolf supporters found they were no longer talking about the hypothetical recovery of wolves in Oregon in the dim future.

Despite a strong public outpouring in favor of the wolf–the USFWS got more than 500 telephone calls from supporters asking them to leave the wolf alone. and even though B-45 had no record of livestock depredation, the USFWS bowed to political pressure from wolf opponents. The wolf was captured and relocated to Idaho. Shortly after her release near Lola Pass in northern Idaho, she began trotting back to Oregon. She covered more than 110 miles as the crow flies (far more miles in the rugged terrain of central Idaho) to settle just east of the Oregon border.

Whether she will stay in Idaho or return to Oregon is anybody’s guess, but the dispersal of B-45 . put a shot across the bow” says Heberger. “We just weren’t thinking that a wolf would be moving into Oregon or other areas so soon.” The subsequent public outpouring of support for wolves in Oregon prompted the usfws to revise its policy of automatically capturing dispersing individuals that pose no threat to livestock. If B-45 or another wolf moves into Oregon or California, it will be given full protection under the Endangered Species Act and be permitted to stay.

There are two legal challenges on the horizon that could jeopardize wolf recovery in Oregon or California. The first is a proposal by the USFWS to change the status of all wolves in the lower 48 from Endangered to the less protective Threatened. Such a change would weaken the legal mandate for recovery outside areas with existing wolf populations.

Whether there will be any wolves left in Idaho to recolonize Oregon or California may soon be determined by a legal suit now before a panel of judges in Colorado. The 1995 and 1996 reintroduction of wolves into Idaho and Yellowstone National Park are being challenged by the American Farm Bureau Federation on a technicality of federal environmental law. A Wyoming judge agreed with the Farm Bureau and ordered the wolves removed, but stayed the order, pending decision on an appeal presented to a higher Colorado court in August 1999.

But even if there is a positive outcome of the appeal process, and wolf populations in the Rockies would expand, does that justify the presence of wolves in California?

Many supporters argue that wolves are native to the state, and restoration of native species has biological and ethical value. A viable California population of wolves would help to ensure their eventual removal from the Endangered Species list. But beyond concern for the welfare of a particular species, wolves are also a potent evolutionary force. To paraphrase the California poet Robinson Jeffers, it was the fang of the wolf that whittled the fleetness of the antelope. Wolves are to wild ungulates what fire is to many California forest ecosystems–a force that needs to be restored.

We can also expect some other potential ecological consequences. In areas where wolves have been eliminated, coyote populations have exploded. Since the density of coyotes is higher than that of wolves, this has actually increased predator problems for livestock producers. Bob Crabtree of Yellowstone Ecosystem Studies, who has studied coyotes in Yellowstone National Park both before and after the reintroduction of wolves, has found that coyote numbers dropped by half in the presence of wolves. The restoration of wolves may actually reduce predator losses for the livestock industry.

The numbers of some species, such as fox, could rise once released from coyote predation. If wolves became widely established in California, they could help the recovery of some endangered species, such as the San Joaquin kit fox, which currently suffers high losses to coyotes.

Though wolves occasionally prey upon domestic livestock, the losses are small. According to a recent article in the Wildlife Society Bulletin, in northwestern Montana between 1987 and 1997, the livestock industry lost 142,000 sheep and 86,000 cattle to all causes including disease, weather, and predation. Of this total, wolves took an average of only ten animals a year, while domestic dogs accounted for the deaths of more than 1,500 animals annually. Even in Minnesota, with more than 2,500 wolves, losses to predators account for typically fewer than 300 animals a year. Clearly, losses from wolves are not a threat to the viability of the state’s livestock industry.

What about human safety? Only a handful of documented records exist of healthy wild wolves biting or threatening humans in North America. No person has been killed. Most reported “wolf attacks” are by captive dog-wolf hybrids. Indeed, one of the major ways that Heberger uses to determine whether a reported wolf sighting is valid is by the behavior of the animal.

Heberger says wild wolves are extremely shy and almost always run away from humans. Matteson spent two full field seasons by herself among wolves and grizzlies in Montana and Canada, but only saw wolves in the wild once. “I heard wolves. I saw tracks,” she says. “But even with the advantage of the radio tracking equipment, wolves are so shy I never saw them, even though I knew they were almost always someplace close by.”

Will wolves return to California? Most biologists who have looked into the question believe they will. When and how is another matter. But almost certainly if wolves establish themselves in Oregon, it won’t be long before their howls reverberate again through the canyons and mountains of the Golden State. Such a sound will represent a small step towards healing the
great wounds humans have inflicted upon our native ecosystems and a clear
signal that at least some ecological changes wrought by us are reversible.

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Historic mining town in the Garnet Range, 1893. Public Domain.

The Garnet Mountains lie between the Blackfoot and Clark Fork Rivers, stretching from Bonner to east of Drummond, Montana.  They are south of the Bob Marshall and Scapegoat Wilderness areas and provide critical habitat to bull trout, grizzly bears, wolverines, and lynx, all of which are on the Endangered Species List.

Yet, the Bureau of Land Management, under the direction of former Montanan Tracy Stone-Manning, has approved a plan to massively deforest the range under the misleading name, the Clark Fork Face Forest Health and Fuels Reduction Project.

The plan authorizes logging, burning, and thinning across 16,689 acres of BLM-managed lands over a 10-15 year period — more than 70% of the agency’s holdings in the Garnet Mountain Range.  Nearly 13 square miles (8,283 acres) are slated for commercial logging to produce four million board feet of timber a year.  Another 4,600 acres are slated to be burned, and mixed logging, thinning and burning are planned on another 2,146 acres.

Such massive deforestation, burning, and bulldozing a spider web of hauling roads will effectively sever the vital connectivity corridors for wildlife – and especially grizzly bears — between the Northern Continental Divide, Greater Yellowstone and Bitterroot ecosystems while contributing new sedimentation to the bull trout spawning tributaries.

NATURALLY THICK FORESTS

Although the BLM claims the forests are “overgrown” and have to be logged to return to “health,” the historic picture taken at the old mining town of Garnet in 1898 shows the native forests were naturally thick, disproving the claims by both the Forest Service and the BLM that forests in the Intermountain West were all open and uniformly park-like.

Given the picture was taken seven years before the Forest Service was even founded, it likewise disproves the agency’s claim that our forests have to be logged, burned and thinned because they are unnaturally thick due to fire suppression. This has been proven false by fire scientists like William Baker et al. 2024 but the agencies aren’t letting science get in the way of clearcutting lynx critical habitat.

Endangered Species Act

Under the Endangered Species Act, we are required to give the government 60 days-notice in which to fix their legal violations and have notified the agencies since we intend to add the Endangered Species Act violations to our lawsuit.

Although the Endangered Species Act requires agencies to recover species and the ecosystems upon which they depend so they can eventually be removed from the Endangered Species list.

The BLM is doing the opposite by refusing to consider the logging project’s cumulative threats, road-related disturbances, and the best-available science. Not only did the BLM fail to acknowledge that many of the “roads” it will use as haul roads are overgrown with trees, it failed to note the project violates the agency’s own wildlife protection standards in its Resource Management Plan.

CLIMATE CHANGE

The BLM failed to take a hard look at the impact of its clearcutting plan on climate change, which is strange since it’s well understood that forests, especially mature and old growth forests, are one of the planet’s most efficient means of absorbing carbon from the atmosphere — and they do for free. When the world is getting hotter every year, it makes no sense to log mature and old growth forests.

Conclusion

Taken together, there are so many problems and illegalities with this project that the Alliance for the Wild Rockies, Center for Biological Diversity, Yellowstone to Uintas Connection, Council on Wildlife and Fish, and Native Ecosystems Council  sued the BLM to stop this incredibly destructive project and protect critical habitat for native species in the Garnet Mountains.

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Gallatin Range, Greater Yellowstone. Photo: Jeffrey St. Clair.

“A fish rots from the head down.” – Rumi

By now, we have all heard rumblings of Empire’s imminent collapse. Propaganda and government gaslighting can no longer hide the obvious fact that social, financial, cultural, and political systems have failed miserably. The advanced state of Empire’s decomposition (rotting from the head down) caused by malevolent and incompetent leadership is now self-evident.

The question I ponder today: Will Empire’s collapse happen before or after it has turned America’s last great sweep of native biological diversity and wildland refugia into human excrement and post-consumer land fill?

“Biodiversity hangs by a thread. Within this mountainous stronghold is sequestered the remnant terrestrial wilderness ecosystems, wildlife corridors and freshwater aquatic ecosystems of the Northern Rockies bioregion,” said Alliance for the Wild Rockies Director, Mike Garrity.These fragments of wild territory represent the last sanctuary for threatened species like bull trout, grizzly bears, lynx, wolverine and whitebark pine – all federally – protected under the provisions of the Endangered Species Act. Other free-roaming species like wild Yellowstone buffalo, wolves, bighorn sheep, mountain lions, elk and many, many others still manage to survive on publicly owned, undeveloped roadless areas, designated Wilderness areas and National Parks.

Today, more than 23 million acres of these undeveloped landscapes – in Montana, Idaho, Wyoming and Eastern Oregon and Washington – remain unprotected, imperiled and ever increasingly vulnerable to being exploited and destroyed by corporations in the resource extraction sector. Clearcuts and logging roads built to access clearcuts fragment the forest, degrade habitat effectiveness, permanently scar the landscape, and compact the fragile, thin forest soil with heavy machinery.

Mining and grazing leave permanent scars and inflict deep wounds on the fragile forest floor.

Fortunately, there is a legislative plan (S-1531) to protect the Northern Rockies ecosystems. The Northern Rockies Ecosystem Protection Act (NREPA), sponsored by Senator Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI), a holistic land-management Senate bill designed to halt and begin to reverse this troubling and destructive trend toward species extinction and industrial conversion from native public forest to failed government tree plantation, privatization, and settler neo-colonialism.

Once these ecosystems are covered by road networks that resemble spaghetti on a map and fractured into tiny, isolated patches it’s almost impossible to put it all back together.

Man’s attitude toward nature is today critically important simply because we have now acquired a fateful power to alter and destroy nature. But man is a part of nature, and his war against nature is inevitably a war against himself.

– Rachel Carson (1907-1964)

Cognitive dissonance is a state of discomfort felt when two or more modes of thought contradict each other. Man’s mind isn’t just at war with wildlife and wilderness, in essence it’s at war with itself too. Our conditioned hive minds worry about what others may think rather than worry about all life being frog- marched into a dark cul-de-sac that ultimately leads to unspeakable violence, mass suicide and genocide.The global capitalist ruling classes openly demonstrate who really controls themmonopoly on violence. We now witness – in your face, and personal – the melting away of the façade of American democracy. every Man will remain unconscious as path to higher consciousness is blocked by big media/entertainment (capitalism’s guardian).

We need to act now to avoid the “Humpty-Dumpty” phenomenon. We’re all intimately interconnected and must re-unite as one community in harmony with nature.

Wilderness ecosystems are not domesticated plantations. Rather than view the natural world with fear as an enemy to be conquered and dominated, try instead to marvel at her divine powers. Embrace Mother Nature as our single life-support system.

Support S-1351 and the Alliance as they lead the charge to protect endangered Wild Rockies ecosystems.

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Photograph Source: Bhopal Medical Appeal, Martin Stott – https://www.flickr.com/photos/44868727@N02/14119398488/ – CC BY-SA 2.0

Soon after the disaster, several concerned lawyers arrived in Bhopal to provide legal assistance to the gas victims. Many ‘ambulance chasers’ also swooped down on the city in that guise, motivated by greed rather than compassion.

Following the filing of many lawsuits against the Union Carbide Corporation (UCC) by victims of the disaster through private US attorneys in different districts/states of the US, the US judicial panel on multi-district litigation passed an order on February 6, 1985 transferring all US federal district court cases relating to the Bhopal disaster to the southern district court of New York.

Soon afterwards, on the plea that the ambulance chasers would misrepresent the interest of the victims, at the instance of the government of India, the President of India on February 20, 1985 promulgated the Bhopal Gas Leak Disaster (Processing of Claims) Ordinance.

The Ordinance empowered the Union of India to represent the victims in all cases relating to claims for compensation. The Bhopal Ordinance was adopted as an Act of Parliament on March 29, 1985.

Of course, there were apprehensions that the government of India may misuse the provisions of the Act and may not represent the interests of all gas victims in the best possible way. Therefore, a number of writ petitions were subsequently filed before the Supreme Court questioning the constitutional validity of the Bhopal Act.

c) Strict liability: “Defendant Union Carbide was under a duty to design, construct, maintain and operate its Bhopal plant in such a manner as to prevent the escape of lethal MIC from the plant and to protect persons from unreasonably dangerous and defective conditions and to warn persons of the dangers and risks associated with the plant and its manufacturing processes.

“Defendant Union Carbide breached this duty and the massive escape of lethal MIC occurred as the result of unreasonably dangerous and defective plant conditions which involved MIC production and storage procedures and facilities, instrumentation, safety systems, warning systems, operation and maintenance procedures…

“In creating and maintaining unreasonably dangerous and defective conditions, defendant Union Carbide is strictly liable for any and all damages caused or contributed to by the escape of MIC from its Bhopal plant…”

d) Negligence: “The Bhopal plant was in the defendant’s exclusive control and the massive escape of lethal MIC could not have occurred but for the negligence of defendant Union Carbide. Defendant Union Carbide is liable for any and all damages caused or contributed by the escape of MIC from its Bhopal plant due to its negligence…”

e) Breach of warranty: “Defendant Union Carbide expressly and impliedly warranted that the design, construction, operation and maintenance of its Bhopal plant were undertaken with the best available information and skill in order to insure safety.

“These warranties were untrue in that the Bhopal plant was, in fact, defective and unsafe and the technical services and information provided by defendant Union Carbide and the resulting plant operating practices were defective in numerous respects… Defendant Union Carbide is liable for any and all damages caused or contributed to by the escape of MIC from its Bhopal plant due to its breach of warranties…”

f) Misrepresentation: “Defendant Union Carbide falsely represented to the plaintiff that its Bhopal plant was designed with the best available information and skill and that the operation of its Bhopal plant would be maintained with current and up-to-date knowledge. Defendant Union Carbide knew that these representations were false, or asserted these representations without knowledge of their truth or falsity, and intended that the plaintiff act thereon.

“The plaintiff reasonably and justifiably relied upon these representations to its detriment. Defendant Union Carbide is liable for any and all damages caused or contributed to by the escape of MIC from its Bhopal plant due to its misrepresentation…”

g) Punitive Damages: “Defendant Union Carbide’s conduct in failing to design, construct, maintain and operate a safe plant exposed the people and property in Bhopal, the adjacent countryside and its environs to a massive disaster which the defendant knew could occur.

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1) Halted Massive Illegal Old Growth Logging in Montana’s Little Belt Mountains.

Northern Goshawk. Photo: USFS.

The Alliance stopped the Horsefly logging and burning project in the Little Belt Mountains, north of White Sulphur Springs, Montana, to protect grizzly bear, wolverine, and northern goshawk habitat. The Helena-Lewis and Clark NF called for cutting and burning 10,343 acres—more than 16 square miles. To enable the logging, the Forest Service planned on bulldozing a stunning 40.7 miles of new logging roads. The federal district court ruled in our favor.

2) Saved Ashley National Forest Roadless Areas from Bulldozers and Chainsaws.

Ashley National Forest. Photo USFS.

The Alliance filed a lawsuit to stop a Forest Service plan to bulldoze, log, and burn up to 147,000 acres (230 square miles!) of Inventoried Roadless Areas in the Ashley National Forest in northeast Utah. When faced with our lawsuit, the Forest Service decided to pull the project rather than lose in federal court.

Although facetiously called a “restoration project,” the Forest Service’s proposal blatantly violated the Federal Roadless Area Conservation Rule, which prohibits the cutting, sale or removal of trees inside Inventoried Roadless Areas except in very limited circumstances.

3) Stopped 320,000-acre, or 500-square mile, Pine Valley pinyon juniper logging and burning project in the Dixie National Forest in Utah.

Pinyon Jay. Photo USFWS.

The Alliance submitted detailed comments outlining the importance of pinyon juniper trees for wildlife, including for the pinyon jay, a bird that is dependent on pinyon pine seed and juniper berries to survive.  Pinyon jay populations have nose-dived, falling by over 85 percent in the last 50 years; mainly due to habitat loss caused by Forest Service and BLM projects.

4) Challenged Old Growth Logging in the Bitterroot National Forest in Montana.

Logging site in Montana’s Bitterroot National Forest. Photo: Jeffrey St. Clair.

The Alliance and Native Ecosystems Council filed a lawsuit in September to stop the Gold Butterfly logging and burning project, east of Corvallis, Montana. The project would destroy wolverine and grizzly bear habitat and bull trout critical habitat in the Sapphire Mountains on the Bitterroot National Forest.

5) Sued to “Stop the Chop” in Colville National Forest.

Canada lynx. Photo: USFWS.

The Alliance filed a lawsuit in federal district court to stop the Forest Service’s Sxwutn-Kaniksu Connections Trail Project which authorizes logging, burning and road bulldozing for the next 20 years across 141 square miles impacting more than 90% of the Colville National Forest within the project area in eastern Washington and on the Idaho border in grizzly bear and lynx habitat.  The Forest Service has agreed to stop starting new logging projects until the Court issues a final ruling.

6) Filed Lawsuit to Restore Endangered Species Act Protections for Wolves.

Gray wolf. Photo USFWS

The goal of state governments in Montana, Idaho, and Wyoming is to once again exterminate wolves from the Northern Rockies. They think the only good wolf is a dead wolf. The goal of our lawsuit is to protect wolves under the Endangered Species Act and to end the slaughter.

7) Won an Injunction to Stop Logging and Burning in grizzly and lynx habitat on the Beaverhead-Deerlodge National Forest in southwest Montana.

The Forest Service secretly removed protections for over one million acres of lynx habitat in the Beaverhead-Deerlodge National Forest because it would have stopped habitat destruction projects like this.  Thanks to our great attorneys, the court ruled in our favor.

8) Took on the Forest Service in Federal Court to protect grizzly and wolverine habitat in the Bitterroot Mountains.

Wolverine. Photo: USFWS.

The Alliance filed a lawsuit against the Bitterroot National Forest challenging the Mud Creek Project early last year. Over the course of 20 years, the project would commercially log 13,700 acres—including 4,800 acres of clearcuts in areas with mature and old growth forests—and would intentionally burn an additional 40,360 acres of National Forest lands in southwest Montana.

9) Fought to get a Court Order requiring the Fish and Wildlife Service to Proceed with Grizzly Bear Recovery in the Bitterroot ecosystem in central Idaho and western Montana.

Grizzly. Photo USFWS.

The Alliance won a big victory in federal district court when the court ordered the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service to move forward on recovering grizzly bears in this region, as required by the Endangered Species Act.

10) Still working to protect all Greater Yellowstone Wilderness Study Areas as Wilderness.

There’s a big controversy right now over the future of hundreds of thousands of acres of Forest Service lands abutting Yellowstone National Park and comprising the core of the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem. These lands are primarily in the Gallatin and Madison ranges, which are facing increasing pressures from a variety of development and recreational pressures.

The Alliance is fighting to pass the Northern Rockies Ecosystem Protection Act, S. 1531, which would protect all Greater Yellowstone Wilderness Study Areas as Wilderness along with designating all roadless areas in the Northern Rockies as Wilderness.

What’s Next? Our attorneys are working hard to file three new lawsuits to stop even more proposed logging and clearcutting projects in grizzly, lynx, and wolverine habitat.

In addition to working on filing new lawsuits, our attorneys are waiting on court rulings challenging the East Paradise grazing project, the South Plateau logging project on the border of Yellowstone National Park, and the Hanna Flats project in the Idaho Panhandle National Forest. And finally, we submitted comments to several dozen individual projects proposed by the Forest Service and BLM for wild lands across the Northern Rockies region.

Please consider donating on Giving Tuesday to help the Alliance for the Wild Rockies and Counterpunch do more in 2025. We and our planet need your help.

Thank you for supporting our efforts to protect the Northern Rockies ecosystem.

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Burning piles in the Gallinas Canyon Piles Prescribed Burn 2022 unit on January 12, 2022, Santa Fe National Forest. Photo: USDA Forest Service

In April of 2022, three wildfires were ignited in the Santa Fe National Forest by three separate US Forest Service escaped prescribed burns. 378,000 acres of the Santa Fe National Forest, Carson National Forest and private lands were burned. As a result of the two larger of these fires, the Calf Canyon Fire and the Hermits Peak Fire, entire communities were catastrophically impacted – 900 structures including 340 homes were burned down, thousands of people were displaced, and a traditional way of life was forever altered. Three people died in the aftermath of the fire from post-fire flooding. The cost of recovery efforts will be well over $5 billion. It is unknown how much conifer regeneration will occur on the approximately 82,000 acres that burned at high severity.

Although a review of the causes of Hermits Peak Fire was released in June of 2022, I had been waiting for two and a half years for the analysis of the more impactful Calf Canyon Fire to be released. It was strangely delayed.

As most know, the Forest Service prescribed burn that ignited the Hermits Peak Fire was a broadcast burn, set during a New Mexico spring high wind pattern with red flag warnings in effect in nearby areas. This prescribed fire escaped due to winds and dry vegetation, and it was declared a wildfire on April 6. The Calf Canyon Fire was ignited by piles of thinning debris that had been burned during the winter and had not been fully extinguished. Some of the smoldering piles flared up months later in the spring winds. By the time the Calf Canyon Fire was declared a wildfire on April 19, the Hermits Peak Fire had been considered to be contained. However, the winds also fanned up the Hermits Peak Fire again.

The two fires proceeded to burn side-by-side to the northeast with the prevailing winds, and then merged during another major wind event on April 23. The Hermits Peak/Calf Canyon Fire continued until late June, at which point it had burned over 533 square miles within three counties.

Map showing the Hermits Peak and Calf Canyon Fire perimeters on April 23, when they were starting to merge. USDA Forest Service

Recently, the Forest Service quietly released its review of the Calf Canyon Fire. The implications are stunning and yet unsurprising to conservationists who have been critical of the forest management strategy of aggressive cutting and over-burning for years. There was clearly human error involved, but what is most apparent is that the basic paradigm the Forest Service is currently employing to “manage” forests is highly flawed and backfiring – and in the case of the Hermits Peak/Calf Canyon Fire, it backfired spectacularly.

The Forest Service implemented the prescribed burns that ignited the Hermits Peak/Calf Canyon fire largely out of concern for the City of Las Vegas’ water system and water quality. The Calf Canyon fire review states “In May of 2000, the Viveash Fire highlighted the vulnerability of the city’s water system when a small portion of the wildfire burning in the Cow Creek drainage burned into the Gallinas Canyon Watershed. This high-severity wildfire resulted in dramatic impacts to the Las Vegas, New Mexico city water quality.” In 2006, in order to protect the Las Vegas water system from further impacts, the agency proposed and then later proceeded with implementation of the Gallinas Municipal Watershed Wildland Urban Interface Project. The primary purpose of the Project was to reduce the severity of future wildland fires by aggressively cutting mixed conifer and applying prescribed fire. The Project Decision states that the potential for an escaped prescribed burn was one of three key issues.

The ranger who signed the project decision told me that he did not want broadcast prescribed burns included in the project plan because he believed it was too risky. He said that he wanted the post-cutting debris management to include only pile burns and chipping. However, he was under pressure from Forest Service higher ups to include broadcast burns in the project plan, to the extent that he believed his career was on the line if he did not. He had a family to support, and so he complied.

The Hermits Peak/Calf Canyon Fire occurred due to escaped prescribed burns resulting from the implementation of this project, and it ultimately caused much more destruction to Las Vegas water quality than did the Viveash Fire. The fire burned extensive areas of the Gallinas watershed, the primary source for the city’s water, and contaminated it with ash and sediment. The contamination is still ongoing and very expensive to contend with.

A primary “lesson learned” provided by the Calf Canyon Fire review team was that the aggressive mechanical thinning opened up the tree canopy, exposing the forest floor to more solar radiation. This resulted in an increased rate of snowpack evaporation and snowmelt – thereby drying out the treated landscapes. Additionally, the review states that the open canopy may have increased “windthrow,” which means that trees which were formerly structurally supported by nearby trees were blown over in strong winds. The downed trees provided more fuel on the ground that spread fire from the burning piles.

A 2018, and subsequent 2021, wind event resulted in additional downed timber in the Gallinas Pile Burn Unit. Note the broken stems; these were broken off in the wind events. This picture does not depict the snow conditions the day of ignition. Photo: USDA Forest Service

Such unintended consequences are what conservation organizations and scientists had been warning of. Further drying out forests while the climate is becoming both hotter and drier is not a sound approach. Aggressively dismantling existing forest structures in an effort to create “healthy” and fire-resistant forest has serious side effects, and the Calf Canyon Fire review demonstrates that it’s not necessarily possible to compensate for such effects.

The review states that the Forest Service followed “lessons learned” from a prior pile burn escape in the same area in 2018 by carrying out the pile burns in January, and making sure there was a continuous snowpack around the burn piles. Burning piles under such conditions was much better than burning when conditions were dry, but was not sufficient to prevent a wildfire in 2022 that was exponentially larger and hotter than the 2018 pile burn escape.

The Hermits Peak Fire review states that the Forest Service felt compelled to complete the prescribed burn that ignited that fire after numerous delays, despite clearly marginal burn conditions. The delays included government shutdowns, the global pandemic, and a court injunction due to the Forest Service’s non-compliance with Mexican Spotted Owl regulations. The Calf Canyon Fire review states that a primary factor in the Forest Service’s inability to contain the spreading fire from the burn piles early on was a lack of resources both for monitoring burn piles for escaping fire, and for fire suppression. This incapacity was largely due to the already limited resources having been taken up by the Hermits Peak Fire.

In the Forest Service’s January 2022 publication, “Confronting the Wildfire Crisis: A Strategy for Protecting Communities and Improving Resilience in America’s Forests,” the agency made its case for the strategy of greatly increasing logging and burning forests, up to four times the current levels in some areas. This mandate was fiscally supported by Congress through the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act, with 3.5 billion dollars allocated for “forest management.” Yet somehow the Forest Service continues to be understaffed and under equipped. It’s simple math – the agency can’t safely expand the amount and frequency of forest cutting and burning treatments without a corresponding increase in personnel and equipment.

During the two weeks prior to the declaration of the Calf Canyon Fire, the escaping burn piles were being monitored by aerial overflights, utilizing infrared heat-detecting technology. The data obtained from these overflights was not enough to prevent the Calf Canyon Fire from breaking out in the New Mexico spring high winds. The Calf Canyon Fire Review contains the recommendation that “Where feasible, investigate and utilize new remote sensing technologies (remote cameras and software) for monitoring pile burning.” Currently there are very few monitoring overflights per year in the Santa Fe National Forest due to the lack of personnel and equipment, and infrared heat-detecting technology is limited and cannot identify heat deep under piles or down in the ground where smoldering can persist for months.

While I was waiting for the Calf Canyon Fire review to be released, I mused about why the Forest Service did not completely extinguish all the burn piles in early April, when some of the piles were known to be spreading fire – knowing that in this region high winds are the norm in April. The review provided some insight into my question.

The review describes the intense winds during the incident. “April 9th was the beginning of a very windy and dry period with Red Flag Warnings issued almost every day through April 22nd.” The Calf Canyon Incident Commander described the circumstances under which they were attempting to extinguish the burning piles:

“We found two to three smoldering stump holes burning that were interior. We opened them up and worked on them and cold trailed the area (feeling for heat with hands and digging out any live spots) to be sure they were completely dead out.” The IC observed that there was “smoke below the soil”, from underground roots and stumps. Resources gridded up and back on hands and knees through the fire area making six passes. Ash pelted their faces each time they would turn to look back…. “Every time I turned my head to talk to those behind me, a cloud of ash would hit me in the face because the wind was blowing so hard”….“I still have what I call Calf Canyon cough from that day.”

Conditions during the incident were such that the situation quickly became unmanageable, despite the intensive efforts of those on the ground. Fire was spreading underground along tree roots and surfacing as the winds fanned the flames. This points to the inherent risks of implementing pile burns in this dry and windy region.

The Calf Canyon Fire review makes it clear that treating dry forests in this region with aggressive cutting and burning may have many more adverse consequences than benefits. In the past 25 years, the majority of acres burned in the Santa Fe National Forest were ignited by either Forest Service or National Park Service escaped prescribed burns.

An additional consequence of the Forest Service continuing to go forward with widespread and aggressive fuels treatments is the increasing mistrust and hostility from the public. During the past two falls, the agency had intended to implement a prescribed burn in the North Aztec Springs area, just outside of Santa Fe. This burn would take place near a development of homes. Local residents went to meetings with the Forest Service about the potential burn, expressing high levels of fear and anger. During the fall of 2023, conditions were very wrong for such a burn, with strong winds, legacy slash piles remaining unburned in the area, and the only egress in case of a prescribed burn escape partially blocked by utility work. Residents were appalled that after the Hermits Peak/Calf Canyon Fire, the Forest Service would even consider implementing a burn under such risky conditions. This past fall, conditions seemed much better, but this year’s meeting about the burn was just as contentious, if not more so, than last year’s. The burn was again postponed.

At this point it appears that the Forest Service intends to go forward with largely the same forest management strategies as before the Hermits Peak/Calf Canyon Fire impacted forest and residents so severely. However, a lesson learned from the Calf Canyon Fire review team was, “As landscapes, or stands, become further removed from their normal range of historical variability (RHV), incrementally changing the stand structure, albeit more expensive, is more prudent than dramatic shifts. Several entries may be required to achieve the desired result.” This recommendation indicates that the Forest Service is at least beginning to understand that the sheer amount and intensity of treatments they have been implementing are a serious risk to both forests and local communities. Aggressive treatments are a “shock to the system” that undermines forest heath.

Since the Calf Canyon/Hermits Peak Fire, there are new procedures in place and generally more caution being applied to planning of treatments, but the fundamental strategy of aggressively removing large amounts of biomass from dry forests, and then burning at overly-frequent intervals, has not been substantially re-examined. This strategy must be reconsidered from the roots up – the warming climate requires this. If cutting and burning treatments are found to be genuinely indicated in some situations, such treatments must be done with an understanding of the impacts and risks to the specific ecosystem being considered for treatment. It’s critical that sufficient canopy cover and natural understory be left remaining, so that the treated forest ecosystems will retain moisture instead of drying out and becoming even more flammable. Conservation strategies should be utilized to assist forest ecosystems in retaining moisture.

It is incumbent upon the Forest Service to work together with conservation organizations and conservation scientists to develop a holistic land management strategy that truly protects both forests and communities. The stakes are too high to do less.

Burned Area Emergency Response specialist assessing soil burn severity in Tecolote Creek Headwaters, within the Hermits Peak/Calf Canyon Fire burn area. Photo: Inciweb.

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Image by Annie Spratt.

“Runaway ice loss causing rapid and catastrophic sea level rise is possible within our lifetimes.” (Source: Our Science, Your Future: Next Generation of Antarctic Scientists Call for Collaborative Action, Australian Antarctic Research Conference, November 22, 2024)

Hundreds of scientists gathered in Australia for an “emergency summit” within the auspices of the inaugural Australian Antarctic Research Conference d/d November 2024. This gathering of 450 mostly “early-career” polar scientists flexed scientific muscles to alert the world to the what’s happening to our planet, taking off the gloves and coming out swinging. They claim we’re got a bigger problem than generally realized: “Efforts to slow down climate change through coordinated global action are paramount to protect the future of Australia, Antarctica, and our planet,” Ibid.

“The experts’ conclusion, published as a press statement, is a somber one: if we don’t act, and quickly, the melting of Antarctica ice could cause catastrophic sea levels rise around the globe.” (Source: Emergency Meeting Reveals the Alarming Extent of Antarctica’s Ice Loss, Earth.com, Nov. 24, 2024)

According to the polar scientists: “The services of the Southern Ocean and Antarctica — oceanic carbon sink and planetary air-conditioner — have been taken for granted. Global warming-induced shifts observed in the region are immense. Recent research has shown record-low sea ice, extreme heatwaves exceeding 40°C (72°F) above average temperatures, and increased instability around key ice shelves. Shifting ecosystems on land and at sea underscore this sensitive region’s rapid and unprecedented transformations. Runaway ice loss causing rapid and catastrophic sea-level rise is possible within our lifetimes. Whether such irreversible tipping points have already passed is unknown.” (Our Science, Your Future)

The scientists are calling for society to set immediate targets to “bend the carbon curve.” Failure to do so will commit generations to unpredictable, unstoppable sea level rise, likely beyond current expectations. Drastic action is necessary before it’s too late, calling for immediate reduction of emissions, CO2.

Coastline Megacities at Risk

However, reducing emissions is likely impossible unless and until major governmental authorities force the issue. Voluntary commitments to cut GHG (greenhouse gases) have not worked for over 30 years. Pledges by more than 150 nations to voluntarily cut emissions at the celebrated Paris 2015 UN climate meeting have flopped like a house of cards.

Meanwhile, residents of vulnerable coastal cities may need to consider forcing the issue by forming Citizen Action Flood Prevention Committees to pressure local, state, and federal officials to take immediate measures to protect valuable real estate that’s subject to turning worthless. These committees could be supported by petitions signed by residents, demanding political action to take mitigation measures to protect their coastlines. For example, would nearly 100% of the residents of Miami Beach sign, maybe. And, how about residents of Jersey City? Maybe yes. And onward….

According to Earth.org, coastal megacities are at serious risk, e.g., Bangkok, Amsterdam, Ho Chi Minh City, Cardiff (UK), New Orleans, Manila, London, Shenzhen, Hamburg, and Dubai as well as megacities Miami and New York City. Many Florida and East Coast cities are high risk, e.g., Ft. Lauderdale, Norfolk, Hampton, Charleston, Cambridge, Jersey City, Chesapeake, Boston, Tampa, Palm Beach. It’s a long list.

Unless and until citizen committees authorized by locals with demands en masse are presented to and accepted by local, state, and national policymakers and acted upon, according to a highly regarded analysis by The Universal Ecological Fund, working with climate scientists from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, The Truth Behind the Climate Pledges: “An environmental and economic disaster from human-induced climate change is on the horizon. An analysis of current commitments to reduce emissions between 2020 and 2030 shows that almost 75 percent of the climate pledges are partially or totally insufficient to contribute to reducing GHG emissions by 50 percent by 2030, and some of these pledges are unlikely to be achieved.”

Moreover, the situation at hand is double trouble as the oil and gas industry has already committed to rapid expansion of fossil fuels at the same time as major corporations are turning up their noses at prior commitments. Climate change has lost its cachet at the worst possible moment: “In February 2024, three major investment companies stepped back from efforts to limit climate-damaging emissions. JPMorgan Chase’s and State Street’s investment arms have both quit a global investor alliance encouraging companies to avoid emissions, and BlackRock has largely limited its involvement. These companies aren’t the only ones backing out on climate agreements. In 2023, Amazon dropped an effort to zero out emissions of half its shipments by 2030, BP scaled back on its plan to reduce emissions by 35 percent by the end of 2030 and Shell Oil dropped an initiative to build a pipeline of carbon credits and other carbon-absorbing projects. Hundreds of companies across the world are backtracking on commitments toward green policies, despite growing concerns that the planet is reaching a crisis point.” (Source: Why Are Companies Reneging On Emissions Reduction? Earth Talk, April 11, 2024)

Recent headlines tell the story: Top Companies Exaggerating Their progress (BBC) When Companies Reverse Their Climate Commitments (Yale Insights) Net Zero Promises from Major Corporations Fall Short (NBC News) Oil Companies Are Still Committed to Burn the Planet Down (Jacobin). A comprehensive list of reneging corporate interests is astonishing.

Making matters more challenging yet, the polar scientists are severely compromised by politics, to wit: “Far-right parties opposing climate action are gaining significant momentum worldwide, especially in Western nations including Argentina, Italy, France, Germany, the Netherlands, and the UK. It is particularly noteworthy that despite their differing domestic agendas, these parties are unified in their resistance to climate initiatives.” (Source: The Betrayal: Why the Far Right Abandoned Action on Climate Change, Oxford Political Review, 18 June 2024)

“The contemporary far-right’s turn against the environment is a major break from the past. During the 1980s, traditional conservatives, like Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher, showed an interest in addressing environmental issues,” Ibid.

The World at a Crossroads

Which will it be? The choice is crystal clear. There are two and only two: (1) Fight dangerous climate change by stopping fossil fuel CO2 emissions now, or (2) Bale-out flooded megacities down the road?

Based upon data from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change 6^th Assessment and multiple lines of evidence, current and future emissions will determine the amount of additional sea level rise: the greater the emissions, the greater the warming, and the greater the likelihood of higher sea levels. Based upon emissions to date, two feet of sea level rise will likely occur along the U.S. coastline between 2020 and 2100. That’s already baked into the cake. Failing to curb future emissions could add an additional 1.5 to 5 feet of rise, for a total of 3.5 to 7 feet. (Source: U.S. Sea Level Change, USGS Technical Report, 2022)

The USGS 2022 Technical Report, as outlined in the preceding paragraph, is now choking on the dust of two-years of the hottest 24 months on record, smashing all records with 2023 +1.48C hotter and January-September 2024 +1.54C above the pre-industrial average. A USGS technical update today would almost certainly add to sea level rise projections. Thus, prompting an obvious concern: Is global warming already getting out of hand?

Which way will society turn: (1) stop fossil fuel emissions now, or (2) bale-out flooded megacities later? And would that even be possible?

450 polar scientists are not scaremongers. They’re professionals that are deadly serious. We’ve got a much bigger problem than generally realized.

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