Slice of Local Good News Stomped Out by Humanity’s Oversized Footprint
April 24, 2025
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Last year delivered a 300-acre sliver of good news to a beleaguered natural world. The 25th annual Rhode Island Natural History Survey BioBlitz, held at the Norman Bird Sanctuary in Middletown, set a record for the number of species found.
The 1,430 amphibians, ants, algae, bees, birds, butterflies, fungi, lichens, mammals, mosses, moths, mollusks, spiders, and wasps, among others, significantly outnumbered the species found during the second BioBlitz, also held at the Third Beach Road coastal property, in 2001.
This bit of local good news, sadly, is easily squashed by humankind’s monstrous footprint. For one, the number of 2024 BioBlitz participants was about four times more than in 2001, 385 to 86. Those 86 volunteers, in lousy weather and several days after 9/11, identified 769 species.
The fact 299 more people volunteered last year compared to 2001 speaks volumes about the tireless work of the Rhode Island Natural History Survey in spreading awareness and education about the natural world and the importance of protecting it.
The nonprofit’s work, however, can’t keep pace with the environmental destruction being done in Rhode Island, across the country, and around the world.
We, the planet’s greediest inhabitants, trash, pollute, poison, plunder, and kill with little to no thought. The sexual-predator-in-chief can’t wait to rape Mother Nature some more.
The Mad King recently issued a rule that would rescind nearly all habitat protections for endangered species, to open up more space for drilling, fracking, mining, logging, and other for-profit pillaging. He wants to dismantle environmental and public health protections as part of a broader quest to boost fossil fuel extraction and industrial access, even in the country’s most sensitive and vulnerable natural areas.
The mind-numbing proposal from the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service and National Marine Fisheries Service offers a twisted interpretation of the 52-year-old Endangered Species Act. It would strike habitat destruction from regulations.
The regime’s cluster of minions contend habitat conquest shouldn’t be considered “harm” because it isn’t the same as intentionally targeting a species.
To anyone who isn’t a MAGA zombie, protections for the places where endangered and threatened animals and plants live are, of course, crucial to ensuring they don’t go extinct. Spotted owls, Florida panthers, and grizzly bears are among the species that would likely suffer.
Kelp forests, a vital ecosystem for many marine species, including fish humans like to eat, face threats from the climate crisis, ocean acidification, and pollution from coastal development and agricultural runoff.
According to MAGA logic, failing to protect these underwater forests won’t cause any harm. They apparently believe the creatures that feed, breed, live, and hide among seaweed will thrive in the open ocean surrounded by flotsam and jetsam and eating microplastics.
It would be like expecting the Mad King to thrive if we removed him from his opulent Mar-a-Lago estate and placed him in a Leavenworth prison cell.
The Mad King has also signed an executive order that seeks to roll back protections for marine national monuments. The order calls for a review of all existing marine national monuments to assess opening them to commercial fishing as he did in the Pacific Islands Heritage Marine National Monument.
The West Coast monument, a chain of islands and atolls amid some 160 seamounts and nearly 500,000 square miles, is a treasure trove of marine biodiversity. MAGAs don’t care. They take pleasure in punishing the voiceless and marginalized, even if it ends up hurting them. Ignorance is bliss.
The EO directs the secretary of commerce to “immediately consider suspending, revising, or rescinding regulations that overly burden America’s commercial fishing, aquaculture, and fish processing industries.”
From Heard Island and McDonald Islands, a group of uninhabited volcanic islands near Antarctica, covered in melting glaciers and home to tariffed penguins, to downtown D.C., nowhere on the planet is safe from the Mad King’s hate and cluelessness.
His attacks on laws and areas that protect marine species will likely impact endangered North Atlantic right whales. There are an estimated 340-370 of these whales remaining, including about 70 reproductively active females.
Entanglement in fishing gear and vessel strikes are the leading causes of North Atlantic right whale mortality, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.
“Human impacts continue to threaten the survival of this species,” the federal agency has reported. “The number of new calves born in recent years has been below average.”
I look forward to the anti-wind crowd expressing their outrage at the Mad King’s disregard for the marine mammal they like to hide behind.
The co-authors of a 2020 study didn’t sugarcoat the biological mess we have created.
“The ongoing sixth mass extinction may be the most serious environmental threat to the persistence of civilization, because it is irreversible,” they wrote. “Thousands of populations of critically endangered vertebrate animal species have been lost in a century, indicating that the sixth mass extinction is human caused and accelerating. The acceleration of the extinction crisis is certain because of the still fast growth in human numbers and consumption rates.”
They also noted that “species are links in ecosystems, and, as they fall out, the species they interact with are likely to go also.”
“In the regions where disappearing species are concentrated, regional biodiversity collapses are likely occurring,” according to the trio of authors. “Our results reemphasize the extreme urgency of taking massive global actions to save humanity’s crucial life-support systems.”
Unsurprisingly, the past five years haven’t stemmed the tide in our evisceration of the natural world. In fact, past human thoughtlessness is still wreaking havoc.
Humans are driving biodiversity loss among all species across the planet, according to a recent synthesis of more than 2,000 studies. The study, which accounted for nearly 100,000 sites across all seven continents, found that human activities have resulted in “unprecedented effects on biodiversity.”
The exhaustive global analysis covered five drivers of decline: habitat change; direct exploitation of resources such as hunting and fishing; climate change; pollution; and invasive species.
Polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs), toxic human-made chemicals, can cause a range of health problems, including cancer, for both humans and wildlife. These poisons were banned nearly 50 years ago, but since they are persistent and accumulate in the environment and in bodies, particularly in fatty tissues, they are still tormenting and killing life.
Researchers, in a recently published study, found that higher levels of PCBs in the body and increased sea surface temperatures are linked to a greater mortality risk from infectious diseases for short-beaked common dolphins.
The study’s authors noted the ocean is facing “a triple planetary crisis” of climate change, pollution, and biodiversity loss. Offshore wind turbines aren’t listed as a culprit.
We’re now repeating this poisonous scenario with per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS). We refuse to learn.
Toxic algal blooms, fueled by rising water temperatures and the accumulation of fertilizer, sewage from malfunctioning septic tanks and useless cesspools, and other human byproducts that are rich in nutrients, including nitrogen and phosphorus, are causing aquatic distress.
Bottlenose dolphins and manatees in Florida are starving to death because of these blooms.
We’re responsible for all this annihilation, directly and indirectly, because we’ve been programmed to mindlessly consume and waste. Gasoline prices are more concerning than atmospheric carbon dioxide levels. (Have you noticed that most of the people who complain about gasoline prices drive expensive gas-guzzling vehicles?)
A different study published last month assessed the extinction risk of 1,579 species of vertebrate and insect pollinators and found that more than one in five is at risk of extinction.
Pollinators, such as bees and other insects, birds, and bats, are critical for food production and ecosystem function. We need them to survive.
The study found all three pollinating bat species are at risk and bees are the insect group most at risk — an estimated 34.7% of 472 species assessed are at risk of extinction. The study also found a substantial number of butterflies (19.5% of 632 species), moths (16.1% of 142 species), and flower flies (14.7% of 295 species) are threatened.
Insects, both pollinators and otherwise, are rapidly disappearing, impacted by our destruction of habitat and persistent spraying of poisons.
A global scientific review published in 2019 found about 40% of insect species are declining and a third are endangered. The rate of extinction is eight times faster than that of mammals, birds, and reptiles. It noted the total mass of insects is falling by a precipitous 2.5% annually. The authors warned insect populations could vanish within a century.
A study published a year later found the world has lost 5% to 10% of all insect species in the past 150 years, or between 250,000 and 500,000 species.
From 2000 to 2020, butterfly populations fell by 22% across 554 species.
If you don’t believe those numbers, Casey Johnson, a research associate in the University of Rhode Island’s Department of Plant Sciences and Entomology, provided a real-world anecdote, during a recent conservation with me about misunderstood wasps, that most anyone 30 or older will likely recognize:
“The biggest thing that comes to mind for me personally is talking about the lack of insects on windshields,” she said. “Honestly, I feel like that’s one of the big things that I can attest to, because I remember going on road trips, going camping with my family, and we would have to stop and clear the windshield off halfway up our drive to Vermont. Now, you never have to do that. You might have a couple specks at the end of a seven-hour drive, and that’s really worrisome for for me … just noticing that in the 30 years that I’ve been here.”
The Rhode Island National History Survey’s new strategic plan emphasizes the importance of biodiversity conservation for the resilience of ecosystems and human communities under stress. The theme for this year’s annual meeting was “Resilience Through Biodiversity,” and the program focused on where and how to find biodiversity, how to document it, threats to it, and what can we do to save it.
We should all be considering the impact our individual and collective actions are having on the nonhuman life we share this planet with. We need them much more than they need us.
Note: The previous record for BioBlitz species identified was 1,308 in Jamestown in 2012. The site was about 600 acres surrounding Great Creek, in the central portion of Conanicut Island.
Frank Carini can be reached at [email protected]. His opinions don’t reflect those of ecoRI News.
Frank, I am totally on the same page with you. Humanity (for the most part) does not care about anything except $$ and power. The complexity of Nature and how it sustains us is beyond most people’s mental “range”. I admire you, Frank, for your writing ability and your refusal to give up. Here, in Burrillville, we have a “Mad King” as well. Our king needs to continue his quest to install a 14+-ton, 2-acre “plastic bag” (artificial turf) over a GAA aquifer. Also, (perhaps you know this already) the town (under the presidency of the local mad king) is counter-suing the resident who is trying to protect the aquifer, Burrillville’s residents, and the environment. Our “Mad King” does not care about any of that. Frankly, he believes the reports of a consultant who works for the town now…concerning PFAS in the plastic “bag”. Prior to hiring said PFAS consulting company, the company was the PFAS consultant of the artificial turf company. Talk about Conflict of Interest!!! Our “Mad King” needs to be in control of everything including the minds of all the town boards (planning and zoning) as well as the rest of town council members. Our “Mad King” does not care about the residents nor the environment and he never will. But, Frank, I too have not given up on stopping the gigantic plastic bag from being installed. Not only does it contain PFAS, but it contains heavy metals, VOCs, HAPs, PAHs, and will shed microplastics. All of these hazardous chemicals will end up in the stormwater which will end up in the Clear River (just yards from the project). It is indeed possible and probable that many of those same chemicals will end up in the aquifer. Barrington residents are going through a similar fight –trying to stop their town government from installing an artificial turf. Sometimes I give up, but then I read articles and opinions such as yours above, Frank, and it gives me hope and determination to continue the fight. Thank you and keep up the great work! We have to stop these “mad kings” from destroying the environment!
Destroying our protected natural habitats so big business and pals of the current administration can all get richer is appalling. Oh, sure they’ll tell us it is only a few places, and we still have plenty of open space and who cares about some random owl, or turtle or insect, but the problem is where does it stop. There are no guardrails or warning signs with this administration, it is just full speed ahead. Now we’re hearing reports of opening space on the ocean floor for mining, when most all other countries oppose it. I’m sure the anti-wind crowd will be equally concerned about that as well. Right? I’ll be waiting.
Mr. Trump seems to be intent on turning the clock back to the 1950s when rapid industrialization blotted out tens of thousands of acres of irreplaceable habitats of all kinds, poisons were routinely spread across the land and seepage, if not direct dumping, into wetlands and waterways was common.
Heroes like Rachel Carson called us out on our ravenous lust for more of everything, and warned us of the dire impacts of our lust.
We seemed to have caught it in the nick of time, but now we are facing an unprecedented attack on the environment. But it’s not just now that precious ecosystems are threatened. For many decades the battle has continued.
I argue that its roots lie in the fundamentals of avarice and carelessness. As long as politicians can be bought this problem will continue. This administration is the poster child for selling its soul (and everything else) for the dollar.
Political reform is necessary. Stop the flow of money and much of the problem is solved. Both parties are guilty.
The attack on the environment proceeds accompanied and abetted by attacks on democracy. You cannot protect the environment unless your protect democracy.
Frank, where do you get the energy to keep coming up with these rants week after week??
Sadly, it’s not just the “mad king” to deplore- his hostility to wildlife, environmental regulations, nature, was well known but we as a country voted for him anyway. How did this happen that the environment counted for virtually nothing in that election?
My rant is that the “human footprint” keeps growing in part because the population keeps growing, but few want to face that – indeed a coalition of ethnic and religious zealots, misogynists, and economists who seek ever expanding markets/production all want to make it grow even faster
I hear this phrase all the time; “both parties are guilty”. It seems to me that the Republicans are dismantling the protections that were put in place primarily by Democrats. I would like someone to explain why my thinking is incorrect.