Rappahannock Tribe acquires nearly 1,000 acres along its namesake river
On Wednesday, the Rappahannock Tribe acquired the largest amount of its ancestral lands to date with the transfer of nearly 1,000 acres from The Conservation Fund, to be preserved in perpetuity under easement with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and the Virginia Board of Historic Resources.
All but a sliver of the four-mile stretch of shoreline that makes up Fones Cliffs, a cultural and ecological treasure that is the location of the tribe's historic homeland, is now protected. The area is the habitat of one of the largest concentrations of nesting bald eagles along the Atlantic coast.
'Tribal citizens will once again, after 350 years of being separated from their mother, the Rappahannock River, have unimpeded opportunities to practice life-sustaining traditions,' said Patricia Morris, the Rappahannock Tribe's marketing coordinator, via email. 'Hunting, fishing, and ceremonies can resume on the lands where their ancestors are buried.'
The tribe will co-steward the land with the Rappahannock River Valley National Wildlife Refuge, whose goal is to protect 20,000 acres of wetlands and its associated uplands along the Rappahannock River and its major tributaries.
'We're just real thrilled that this property is back in the hands of the people that will care for it best,' said Heather Richards, The Conservation Fund's vice president for the Mid-Atlantic Region.
The preservation of an additional 1,000 acres will add to what is a '…very significant contiguous block of land that's now managed for wildlife and native habitat, and that in and of itself is remarkable just in terms of the size of it and also the uniqueness of the cliffs,' said Richards.
The Rappahannock people's roots stretch back centuries before Virginia was first colonized by Europeans, and research has confirmed their presence on the ancient lands surrounding Fones Cliffs.
'Before colonization, limited archeological and historical evidence suggests people were in the river valley 10,000 years ago,' said Morris. 'Captain John Smith found at least forty-three densely populated communities, indicating rich if unknown history.'
The Rappahannock people's way of life was 'centered around the river – fishing, oysters, hunting, agriculture, pottery, basket weaving, fish traps, and netting – all of which was based on the natural resources of the river,' Morris said.
When colonization and development displaced the tribe, forcing them inland,'it was miles away from the tribe's life-sustaining practices,' Morris said. 'The spiritual connection to the river was lost, devastating the culture and changing the history of the tribe's struggle to survive.'
The tribe's return to the river is the culmination of years of effort to acquire the land, which Morris said 'felt a lot like climbing a mountain while carrying a moon-sized shopping bag of moving parts and pieces.'
The land transfer marks the second major acquisition of land by the tribe along the Rappahannock River in recent years. In 2022, the tribe celebrated its rematriation to 465 acres of land bordering the waterway.
Rappahannock Tribe celebrates return of Fones Cliffs acreage
The Rappahannock Tribe will now have opportunities to expand its Return to the River program, which trains tribal youth in traditional river knowledge and practices.
The tribe is also planning to build a small visitors' center on the newly acquired land, new pow wow grounds, walking trails and public education and recreation opportunities through a grant from the American Environmental Restoration Initiative and the National Fish and Wildlife Foundation.
Just over two years ago, the fate of the land was entirely unknown. It was in the hands of the Virginia True Corporation, a developer with big plans for the property, including the construction of an 18-hole golf course, a resort subdivision, luxury condos and federally funded housing.
In 2022, the Virginia True Corporation put the property up for public auction as a result of bankruptcy proceedings. The Conservation Fund was the highest bidder in the public auction for the land and successfully acquired the property for $8.1 million.
Then came more than two years of efforts to secure the funding needed to conserve the land through an easement with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service before it could be transferred into the possession of the Rappahannock Tribe.
After some 'ordinary' delays in that process, the easement was completed in December of last year, and The Conservation Fund was 'able to move pretty quickly to get the fee title into the hands of the tribe,' said Richards.
The tribe's long-awaited return to the River comes at a time of great concern for the health of the Rappahannock River itself. This week, it was designated as the sixth most endangered river in the U.S. by the nonprofit American Rivers.
The nonprofit stated that 'increased strain on water resources and the absence of unified water management threaten the river's ability to meet the needs of both people and nature.'
Recently, counties along the Rappahannock River have requested to withdraw more water from it than ever before in response to residential, commercial and industrial growth in the region, raising concern amongst indigenous leaders and conservationists.
The Rappahannock River stretches roughly 200 miles from the Blue Ridge Mountains to the Chesapeake Bay and supports a diverse range of ecosystems that provide critical habitat for fish and wildlife, according to American Rivers.
Richards said that the struggle overFones Cliffs has taught her that with the right team and perseverance, 'we can actually make some really big inroads on protecting the river and really enhancing and restoring it.'SUPPORT: YOU MAKE OUR WORK POSSIBLE
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San Francisco Chronicle
4 days ago
- San Francisco Chronicle
California's newest invaders are beautiful swans. Should hunters kill them?
On an early August morning, it didn't take long to spot the first pair of huge white swans with orange and black bills and graceful, curving necks as they swam in the marsh along the side of a Solano County levee road. They dabbled in the vegetation as a pickup drove through the Grizzly Island Wildlife Area. A short drive later, past a herd of a dozen tule elk, two more swans appeared in the marsh alongside the dirt road. Then four more. A few hundred yards down the road, out in the distance past a thicket of swaying reeds, dozens of swans swam in the water. For casual bird watchers, the sight of all these majestic animals might be a pleasure and bring to mind swan-themed works of literature, such as 'Leda and the Swan' and 'The Ugly Duckling.' But for wetland biologists and others with a stake in the health of the surrounding Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta, the largest estuary on the West Coast, the birds represent the latest — and an exponentially growing — threat to the few remaining wetlands left in California. These are mute swans, native to Europe and Asia. Weighing up to 30 pounds and with a wingspan of up to eight feet, they're the biggest bird in the marsh, and they're not the least bit shy about throwing their weight around. Fiercely territorial, especially during breeding season, they've been known to drown smaller animals and have killed at least one American kayaker. They've displaced colonies of nesting native birds in other parts of the U.S. they have invaded. Mute swans also feed gluttonously on submerged vegetation, destroying the plant life on which other native wetland species depend. 'They might be a pretty, big, white bird … and they may be charismatic, but they can be pretty nasty,' said Brad Bortner, a retired chief of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service's migratory bird management programs in Washington D.C. In 2008, California banned anyone without a special permit from keeping mute swans as pets or from importing them into the state. The hope was to head off yet another destructive invasive species taking hold in the state. It didn't work. The mute swan population exploded in just a few years. In 2022, state waterfowl biologists estimated there were 1,500 of them. This spring, they estimated more than 12,000, nearly double the year before. Most of the mute swans are in the Suisun Marsh, a sprawling complex of public wetlands, agricultural lands and private duck-hunting clubs on the outskirts of the Bay Area near Fairfield. 'We keep watching them climb and climb and climb,' said Melanie Weaver, waterfowl coordinator for the California Department of Fish and Wildlife. A measure before the state Legislature aims to allow hunters and landowners to shoot the swans for the next five years to try to bring their numbers down to more manageable levels in the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta and beyond. The hunting groups supporting Assembly Bill 764 essentially ask: If Californians are OK with spending more than $13 million since 2018 to kill nearly 6,000 nutria, the 20-pound, orange-toothed South American rodents that have invaded the same waterways, why not let hunters and land owners do the same to mute swans — but for free? 'If the population gets too large and out of control, it may be beyond our ability then to really effectively manage them,' Mark Hennelly, a lobbyist for the California Waterfowl Association, told the Assembly Water, Parks and Wildlife Committee this spring. 'So we want to get ahead of the problem.' Animal welfare groups object That argument has so far been a surprisingly easy sell in the Legislature, despite California's passionate and influential anti-hunting activists. Similar swan-killing proposals have led to protests in other states. The measure easily passed the Assembly without any lawmaker voting against it. It's now pending in the California Senate. No group has opposed the measure so far, according to the CalMatters Digital Democracy database, but that might soon change. Mute swans, unlike nutria, have a dedicated group of supporters, mostly on the East Coast. Nicole Rivard, a spokesperson for Friends of Animals, said she and fellow members of the animal welfare organization believe mute swans shouldn't be treated like vermin. The birds arrived here through no fault of their own, brought by humans, and they don't deserve to be killed for it, she said. Rivard believes the California legislation is motivated by hunters looking for an excuse to have yet another bird to legally shoot. Currently, mute swans can only be killed by landowners if the birds 'are found to be injuring growing crops or property,' according to state regulations. 'We're anti-hunting, so we don't like the idea that (hunting) might be, you know, part of the reasoning behind this,' Rivard said. Arguing that claims of mute swans' environmental damage and aggression are overblown, Friends of Animals and other groups opposed killing them decades ago, after Mid-Atlantic states proposed eradication when their populations began expanding dramatically in the 1990s and early 2000s. The groups protested, filed lawsuits and proposed legislation to try to stop the killing. They had mixed success. Some states began killing the nonnative swans over the animal welfare groups' objections. Notably, Maryland was able to knock the mute swan population down from around 5,000 birds in the early 2000s to around 200 by 2010. 'Continued control and maintenance operations have reduced that number to just a handful of birds today,' said Josh Homyack, the game bird section leader for the Maryland Department of Natural Resources. In Maryland, government agency employees raided mute swan nests and destroyed eggs, captured and euthanized swans when they were flightless during their feather-molting season and shot them in carefully coordinated operations, Homyack said. The state also issued a few permits to kill the birds to local landowners. In New York, the mute swan lobby got a law passed that made it harder to kill the birds, requiring state officials to 'fully exhaust non-lethal control measures' such as nest destruction and capturing birds and moving them to wildlife facilities ' prior to any lethal removal.' The mute swan population in New York has stayed steady at around 2,000 to 3,400 birds. Charisma matters with invasive species On the East Coast, mute swans have been around since before the turn of the last century. They were first imported as ornamental livestock for zoos, parks and estates. Some of California's mute swans likely came in the same way. Weaver, the California waterfowl coordinator, said others were likely brought in the past few years to chase away Canada geese that have increasingly become a nuisance at parks and golf courses. 'People were buying these (swans), and they were just throwing them out there,' she said. Weaver noted their owners didn't do the responsible thing and clip their wings to keep them from flying off. That's hardly surprising. It's no easy task to grab a hissing 25-pound swan, big and angry enough to swamp a kayaker. So with nothing to stop them, the birds flew to nearby marshlands and began reproducing. 'Here we are, not very many years down the road, with a population that is really increasing at a rapid rate,' Weaver said. So far, California's wildlife agency hasn't enacted a mute swan eradication plan similar to the one it started almost immediately — and publicly promoted — a few years ago, after nutria first started turning up in the San Joaquin Valley. Nutria are similarly destructive feeders on aquatic plants. The South American swamp rodents also burrow holes in levees, posing a threat to the state's flood-control and water-supply infrastructure. Dave Strayer, a retired invasive species expert with the Cary Institute of Ecosystem Studies in New York, said he's not surprised state officials haven't been as aggressive with the beautiful mute swans, given the uproar over killing them in other states. He said research has shown that when it comes to invasive animals, charisma matters. The more attractive a problematic non-native species is, the less appetite there is to wipe it out. Stayer gave an example: Few complain about killing common nonnative rats, but you're apt to get death threats at even the suggestion of wiping out ecologically harmful feral cat colonies in the same habitats. He noted that no one has ever complained about efforts to eradicate one of his research subjects, the nonnative zebra mussels that have also invaded California. 'I never had even one person stand up for zebra mussels and say, 'No, these are beautiful, elegant God's creatures' and so forth,' he said. Few wetlands and too many mute swans Supporters of the swan-killing legislation say reducing the number of mute swans should be fairly easy since the giant white birds are easy to spot, identify and kill. Their size and the color and shape of their bills also reduce the risk they'll be confused with other protected bird species, they say. California's native tundra and trumpeter swans would still be protected and illegal to shoot if the bill becomes law. Despite their undeniable beauty, Weaver, the state waterfowl coordinator, sees mute swans similarly to nutria. The swans pose too great a threat to native species reliant on the few wetlands left in California, which has lost at least 90% of the habitats to agriculture and urban sprawl. 'They don't move around the state all that much, and they really like the Delta-Suisun Marsh area, so it's still easy to handle the issue,' Weaver said. 'The longer we wait, it won't be.'
Yahoo
11-08-2025
- Yahoo
Top climate tech exec: The AC gap between Europe and America is becoming an economic liability
Picture this: it's a scorching summer day in the U.S. You wake up in a cool, comfortable room after a solid night's sleep. You head to work, where the temperature is optimised for concentration. Unless you step outside for a lunchtime walk, you're completely protected from the heat. Now picture the same scenario in an average European city. You wake up after a night of tossing and turning. You're sticky, uncomfortable, and already dreading the commute. Jammed on a crowded train, you suffer through a heavy delay as your city's transport infrastructure struggles in the face of extreme temperatures. If you're working from home, the only relief comes from a fan slowly circulating warm air around the room. The fundamental difference between these two realities? Air conditioning. In the U.S., 90% of households have AC. In Europe? Just 20% on average. In some countries, such as the UK, that number falls to less than 5%. At first glance, this might seem like a minor difference — fodder for TikTok skits or Reddit debates, where Americans and Europeans poke fun at each other's respective abilities to handle summer weather. But when the temperature rises, the impact on productivity is anything but trivial. Europe's growing productivity gap with the U.S — which has widened since the pandemic — isn't just a result of regulation, labor laws, or tech prowess. It's now also about climate. Or, more precisely, the difference in how we experience extreme temperatures. Heat is an existential threat to some European economies Europe is the fastest-warming continent on Earth. Across the primarily AC-free nations, heat waves can (and increasingly do) shut down schools, disrupt businesses, and make it impossible for people to function at their best. Employers are forced to shift working hours to protect staff from the heat, those with caring responsibilities struggle to look after the most vulnerable (children, the elderly) and families are caught in a daily battle for comfort and efficiency. This climate vulnerability isn't just inconvenient, it's a serious threat to economic competitiveness. Economists are already warning that Europe's failure to adapt to a hotter future could dampen its growth prospects. Tourism too looks set to suffer. As heatwaves become more frequent, particularly in Southern Europe, holiday-makers are starting to look elsewhere in search of more comfortable climes. This presents an existential threat to the lifeblood of economies, particularly across the Mediterranean. As the continent struggles to balance the demands of climate change and economic growth, heat is a growing liability. Public calls for AC are getting louder. In the UK, searches for homes with air conditioning have soared and AC is quickly becoming a middle class status symbol. In France, politicians like Marine Le Pen have jumped on the bandwagon, announcing a 'grand plan for air conditioning'. You might imagine that the solution is simple: copy the US playbook and roll out air conditioning across Europe. Tempting as it may seem, it's not quite that straightforward. The grid isn't up to the job Air conditioning is electricity-intensive. And most European nations don't have the grid infrastructure to support a shift of this scale. This fragility was laid bare in Italy this summer, when a heat-wave-induced surge in demand for AC triggered blackouts. Europe's national grids are straining at the seams: struggling to keep pace with the range of resilience upgrades required for modern consumption, and grappling with the volume of clean energy sources clamouring to connect. (It's a deep irony that the vast quantities of solar power brought about by hotter, drier summers — which could unlock AC capabilities without creating a new carbon burden — can't be properly harnessed due to grid connection delays.) Across large swathes of Europe, buildings are also older and poorly insulated. Planning restrictions are tighter and the culture of renting rather than owning complicates installation. Collectively, beleaguered grids and logistical challenges means those sweaty nights and lethargic days risk becoming part and parcel of European summers. To escape this incrementally hotter bind and unlock US-style levels of productivity that AC-enabled environments can bring, we need smarter infrastructure and more investment in it. That means using advanced modelling and AI to understand where grids are weakest, how demand is shifting, and where small, targeted upgrades could unlock big gains. It means simulating future heat scenarios to stress-test energy networks before a crisis hits or a capacity expansion is attempted. It means replacing guesswork with precision so that investments in cooling — and the infrastructure behind it — actually pay off. Only with this kind of intelligent planning can Europe move fast enough to adapt to a hotter future — without burning out its grids, budgets, or climate goals in the process. Air conditioning may be the fix, but without addressing the underlying infrastructure challenges, Europe will continue to sweat through the heat and suffer the economic consequences. And across the pond? Well, the Americans are just waking up from a great night's sleep. The opinions expressed in commentary pieces are solely the views of their authors and do not necessarily reflect the opinions and beliefs of Fortune. 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UPI
04-08-2025
- UPI
More than $100M in grant money to be used to protect migratory birds
U.S. Interior Secretary Doug Burgum (pictured at the U.S. Capitol in Washington, D.C., in January) said the Migratory Bird Conservation Commission has approved $102.9 million in federal funding for the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and its partners to 'conserve, restore or enhance' some 548,242 acres of wetland for migratory birds. File Photo by Jemal Countess/UPI | License Photo Aug. 4 (UPI) -- The federal government is approving more than $100 million in federal grant money for the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service for wetland conservations efforts in more than a half-million acres of critical migratory bird habitats. The U.S. Department of Interior said Monday its Migratory Bird Conservation Commission approved $102.9 million in federal funding for the wildlife service and its partners to "conserve, restore or enhance" some 548,242 acres of key wetlands and its associated upland habitats across North America for migratory birds. In addition, more than $201 million in matching funds will be granted by Fish and Wildlife partners. According to the department, the financial infusion for wetland preservation came as part of the 1989 North American Wetlands Conservation Act. U.S. Interior Secretary Doug Burgum said in a statement that NAWCA has "fostered partnerships and an investment in wetland conservation that yield both ecological and economic returns for local communities and a broad range of industries," which he said includes tourism, commercial fisheries, and the forestry and agriculture industries. Burgum, who sits as chair of the migratory bird commission, said the federal grants will "increase and maintain healthy bird populations and wetland habitat" while "supporting local economies and improving public access to recreational activities for American traditions" such as hunting, fishing and birdwatching. Interior said NAWCA is the only federal grant program targeted for the conservation of wetland habitats for migratory bird species. More than $7.1 billion in federal funding since 1991 has advanced the conservation of wetland habitats in all 50 states, Canada and Mexico, according to DOI. It added that more than 7,100 partners from private landowners to state, tribal and local governments, conservation groups, sportsmen's clubs, land trusts and corporate entities had taken part in more than 3,400 federal projects. On Sunday, a noted Marine biologist and conservationist said on social media that U.S. wetlands "are disappearing at a staggering rate" and pointed out that its restoration "can take centuries" to fix. "This hits your safety, your health, your wallet -- your future," Dr. Tom Montgomery posted on X. Montgomery noted that among 170 nations represented at the recent global summit on the wetland crisis in Zimbabwe that there were "two empty seats labeled 'USA,'" he wrote. A 2023 ruling by the U.S. Supreme Court significantly curtailed the regulatory power of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency to regulate and protect water in wetlands under the Clean Water Act of 1972. Yet DOI officials say the commission has aided in the conservation of "much of" America's "most important" waterfowl habitats, saying the NAWCA legislation signed by then-President George H.W. Bush is one of the "most effective tools" the federal government has at its disposal for migratory bird conservation. "NAWCA funding supports projects that enhance or establish areas for hunting and birdwatching, uplifting local economies and improving public access to recreational activities for future generations," stated Justin "J" Shirley, principal deputy director of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. Similar efforts by the prior Biden administration at wetland preservation included over $46 million last year in September to restore some 91,425 acres of wetland habitat in 17 states for waterfowl, shorebirds and other species. It came with nearly $100 million in partner matching funds. In 2023 the year before a total of $50.9 million in NAWCA grants was matched by over $73 million in private partner grants.
