DAILY QUICK READ - SEPTEMBER 8, 2016

Let’s start a new day with this.  Yosemite’s Half Dome at sunrise.  A Mark Lilly photograph.

Good News

Humpbacks are moving off the endangered species list.  But, even good news is fraught with peril.  Even recovering species hover so close to the brink that we need constant attention and effort to prevent falling back.

And now, efforts to protect humpbacks from their most fearsome predator—human beings—are having an impact. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) has announced that most populations of humpback whales, which had been on the brink of extinction, are being removed from the endangered species list.

The announcement, described by NOAA as a “true ecological success story,” comes after 40 years of federal protection that have allowed the whales’ numbers to rebound.

Still, four of the 14 distinct population segments remain on the endangered list, and one—the Mexican whales that feed along the California coast in the fall and summer—is still designated as threatened.

More Good News

Evidence of what we can do if we prioritize and put the effort into making a difference.  Pandas are making a comeback.  Amazing what can be done if we protect their habitat and food supply.

The bears, China's national icon, were once widespread throughout southern and eastern China but, due to expanding human populations and development, are now limited to areas that still contain bamboo forests.

The success is due to Chinese efforts to recreate and repopulate bamboo forests.

Bamboo makes up some 99% of their diet, without which they are likely to starve.

Pandas must eat 12kg (26 lbs) to 38kg worth of bamboo each day to maintain their energy needs.

There are now an estimated total of 2,060 pandas, of which 1,864 are adults - a number which has seen their status changed from "endangered" to "vulnerable", on the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN)'s Red List.

"It's all about restoring the habitats," Craig Hilton-Taylor, Head of the IUCN Red List, told the BBC.

"Just by restoring the panda's habitat, that's given them back their space and made food available to them."

A loss of habitats was what caused the number of pandas to drop to just over 1,200 in the 1980s, according to Mr Hilton-Taylor.

"You need to get the bamboo back and slowly the numbers will start to creep back," he said.

Is It All for Nothing?

The oceans are all that stands between being a blue green living planet and a burnt out cinder.  Once we lose the ocean’s ability to mitigate global warming extinction events will be daily occurrences.

International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN), which is currently hosting the World Conservation Congress in Hawaii, has recently released a report detailing the state of the ocean in response to climate change, and it’s not good.

The ocean has played a disproportionate role in mitigating the effects of human caused climate change, but increasingly extreme storms, bleaching coral, and massive fish die-offs are indications that the oceans can't take much more.

"We all know the oceans sustain this planet, yet we are making the oceans sick," Inger Andersen, IUCN’s director general, said at the World Conservation Congress. "Without this oceanic buffer, global temperature rises would have gone much, much speedier."

Pot Used to be for Tree Hugging Hippies

Now it’s just a business.  And, one that is destroying old growth redwood forests.

We shadow the Eel River, swollen from El Niño rains, as it meanders past the county's last sawmill and then head into SoHum, as locals call southern Humboldt. Flying toward the Pacific Ocean, we pass over redwood-covered hills pockmarked by dozens of clearings hacked from the forest. This land is zoned for timber production, but loggers didn't cut down those trees. In just about every clearing, long white cylinder-shaped structures appear, resembling, some say, rolling papers. It's an apt observation. The buildings are greenhouses and inside, marijuana plants are grown for Humboldt County's multibillion-dollar cannabis industry.

Growers have fragmented forests by cutting trees to build greenhouses and roads on steep hillsides, choking creeks home to endangered salmon with sediment, fertilizers and pesticides and sucking streams dry during a record drought to irrigate marijuana crops. Once-still forests echo with the racket of hundreds of diesel generators. Rat poison and other toxic chemicals used by some growers to protect their plants are killing rare wildlife like the Pacific fisher.