The Weekly Anthropocene, July 19 2023
The "golden spike" showing the start of the Anthropocene, a Nature Restoration Law in Europe, conservation efforts pay off for lions, everybody wants electric school buses, and more!
Earth
For years, an international group of scientists called the Anthropocene Working Group has been debating whether and how to define the Anthropocene, the human-dominated geological epoch we’re living in. A key part of this is determining a “golden spike” location (a GSSP, formally speaking), the geological sample of rock or sediment that provides the canonical “reference” record of a clear, rapid change in conditions on Earth and the start of a new stage in geological time. It’s essentially a geological “smoking gun,” proof that things changed dramatically in a short time. For the Anthropocene, there were an abundance of potential candidates. Now, as of July 2023, the AWG has picked a golden spike location for the Anthropocene1: the tiny Canadian waterbody of Crawford Lake, in southern Ontario.
The sediments of Crawford Lake happen to have perfectly preserved a record of many of the most important changes humans have brought to Earth in the last few centuries. Pollen from Indigenous peoples’ crops shows up in sediments for centuries, then disappears. White pine pollen decreases as European settlers cut down trees. Traces of copper, lead, and fly ash from burning coal start showing up in the 1800s. And an array of much sharper changes show up in the sediments all at once from 1950 through 1954: a surge in plutonium isotopes from atmospheric nuclear weapons testing, an eightfold increase in fly ash from burning coal, and acid rain diminishing calcite layers in the soil. (The AWG is currently discussing whether 1950 or 1952 would be a more appropriate year to designate as the official start of the Anthropocene). In the next few decades, the sediments show that levels of fly ash and plutonium decreased and calcite levels rebounded (thanks to successful campaigns against nuclear weapons testing, coal burning, and sulfur dioxide pollution), but new signs of the Anthropocene appeared, from pollen composition shifting to more heat-loving species as climate change takes hold ash to microplastic fragments becoming more common. If far-future archaeologists looked at this lake alone, they could probably piece together a decent broad-strokes outline of the history of modern humanity: both the unprecedented changes we’ve brought to our planet and our impressive ability to learn from our mistakes. The designation of Crawford Lake as the GSSP for the Anthropocene is a quietly profound moment in history.
Tanzania
In 2005, scientists formally described the first new primate genus in Africa since the 1920s: a unique monkey from the Southern Highlands of Tanzania known as the kipunji (Rungwecebus kipunji). The new species was found to be endangered, and the Wildlife Conservation Society began a range of community-based conservation efforts, including an education program, removing snares, creating woodlots to provide firewood without a need to cut down forest trees, hiring and training local rangers, and smearing chili oil on maize stalks to deter the monkeys from raiding crops and inciting conflict with farmers. Now, a new study has quantified their progress: between 2007 and 2020, the kipunji population has grown by a 65%, from less than 1,200 individual kipunji in 2007 to an estimated 1,966 in 2020. This remains quite small, but there’s lots of opportunity to grow further: the study authors estimate that if current forest protection continues, the population could double in the next 25 years. A great conservation success story!
European Union
On July 12th, 2023, the European Parliament approved a landmark Nature Restoration Law, requiring all 27 EU countries to implement recovery plans for 20% of degraded ecosystem areas (on land and sea) within their borders by 2030, rising to cover all degraded ecosystems by 2050. It now needs to be signed off on by the European Commission and national governments (EU law is complicated), but this vote was the most important step, and the Nature Restoration Law is now very likely to be implemented.
This is an unprecedented commitment to continent-scale rewilding, and will likely legally support (indeed, legally require), a range of awesome, innovative conservation projects across Europe in the next few decades. The law also strikes a good balance on biodiversity and climate action, explicitly stating that the new nature restoration requirements should not be used to block new renewable energy projects, as they are “overwhelmingly in the public interest.” Great news!
United States
On June 26, the Biden Administration announced nearly $1.7 billion in clean bus grants for state, city, and tribal transportation departments across the country. The 130 awardees, spread across 46 states and territories (see map), will together use the money to buy over 1,700 new American-made lower-emission buses, more than half of which will be 100% clean zero-emission buses. Awardees include Washington D.C. (which will use the money to purchase 100 electric buses), Seattle (30 electric buses), Iowa City (4 electric buses), and the Seneca Nation of Indians (a new transit hub building). Notably, even the BIL’s federal largesse can’t keep up with community demand for electric public transport: this round of grants received $8.7 billion worth of applications! A good problem to have.
Lions
Lions globally have declined in recent decades, with the species population dropping 43% between 1993 and 20142. To be precise, the IUCN lion status assessment found that from 1993 to 2014, lion population has grown by 12% across five countries (Botswana, Namibia, South Africa, Zimbabwe, and India), but declined by 61% everywhere else in its range, leading to an overall 43% population decrease for the species as a whole and an estimated total population of 23,000-39,000. So lions have been doing fairly well in a southern African stronghold and in the isolated Indian population of Asiatic lions, but were losing ground across the rest of the African continent.
Now, thanks to better protection in and around several key national parks, lions are starting to surge back in areas of Africa where they had previously been on the verge of disappearing. In Mozambique’s Zinave National Park, rewilding an array of herbivore species that had been hunted out during a civil war led lions to come in and resettle the park on their own. In Zambia’s Kafue National Park, more anti-poaching efforts and community education has led to a slow recovery of lion populations. In Senegal’s Niokolo Koba National Park, anti-poaching efforts allowed an isolated West African lion subpopulation to double from 15 individuals in 2011 to 30 today. And Chad’s Zakouma National Park and neighboring reserves have become a rare zone of security and an economic hub for the region since the Chadian government turned management over to renowned NGO African Parks, allowing lions to reestablish connectivity between small groups by moving freely across the landscape. Hopefully these “green shoots of change” will continue to grow and add up to a species-wide comeback!
This isn’t quite the same as officially designating the Anthropocene as a new epoch, or at least not yet. To quote Vox, “The Subcommission on Quaternary Stratigraphy will consider the proposal in the next few months. Next, the International Commission on Stratigraphy will vote on whether the Anthropocene deserves to be designated a new epoch. Then the International Geological Congress will make the final determination.” Scientific institutions can be just a tad bureaucratic, especially when making official judgments on matters of planetary import. Also, “stratigraphy,” is one of this writer’s favorite words, because it’s an imposing-sounding technical term for “the study of rocks and sediments layered on top of other rocks and sediments.”
See The Weekly Anthropocene’s deep dive on big cats for more detail on the status of lions and other big cat species.
Love the "golden Spike" info and cheers for the EU and our electric bus grants. I hope the geophysics people make a decision before too long ..things are heating up fast!