Wild Hope Website – Watch Episode 4: Does Nature Have Rights?

Educator Guide – Wild Hope – 4

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<p>Ecuador is one of the most biodiverse places on the planet—a country about the size of Nevada that’s estimated to be home to twice the number of plant and animal species as the United States and Canada combined. It’s also is the first country in the world to enshrine the “rights of nature” in its constitution—to establish that species other than humans have their own legal right to exist. And now this revolutionary concept is being put to the test.</p>
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Does Nature Have Rights?

Recovering salmon populations are reviving a “nutrient express” from the ocean to the forest. When they return to the rivers to spawn, die and get eaten, the salmon transfer critical nutrients from water to land, enriching the entire ecosystem. The Elwha’s revival is encouraging advocates to push for the removal of many larger dams in the Pacific Northwest and in the rest of the world and buoying the spirits and reviving the traditions of the people of the Lower Elwha Klallam Tribe, who led the fight for dam’s removal.<br><br>

Recovering salmon populations are reviving a “nutrient express” from the ocean to the forest. When they return to the rivers to spawn, die and get eaten, the salmon transfer critical nutrients from water to land, enriching the entire ecosystem. The Elwha’s revival is encouraging advocates to push for the removal of many larger dams in the Pacific Northwest and in the rest of the world and buoying the spirits and reviving the traditions of the people of the Lower Elwha Klallam Tribe, who led the fight for dam’s removal.

The Beautiful Undammed

One of the most inspiring conservation stories in American history is playing out on, of all places, a live-fire training ground at an Army base in North Carolina. There, an improbable alliance is giving a special bird—the endangered red-cockaded woodpecker (RCW)—a new lease on life.<br><br>
Unlike other species of woodpecker, which nest in dead wood, the RCW drills cavities into living trees, specifically, living longleaf pines. Some of these nests eventually become important homes for other species—like wood ducks and squirrels, making the woodpecker a keystone species in its habitat. But Americans started cutting down longleaf pines for timber and other uses, and over the decades, forests that once blanketed the southeast disappeared.<br><br>
As the pines went, so did the RCW. Its numbers plummeted from 1.5 million breeding groups prior to 1910 to just 4000 in 1995. The woodpecker’s future looked bleak—until researchers discovered a population of the bird thriving in the hostile confines of Fort Bragg—recently renamed as Fort Liberty.<br><br>
Some conservationists feared that the Fort’s live-fire exercises were harming the birds, and the US Fish and Wildlife Service, which enforces the Endangered Species Act (ESA), ordered the base to cease training in the bird’s habitat. Tensions soared – until scientists made the startling discovery that the military training itself was creating the healthy RCW habitat.<br><br>

One of the most inspiring conservation stories in American history is playing out on, of all places, a live-fire training ground at an Army base in North Carolina. There, an improbable alliance is giving a special bird—the endangered red-cockaded woodpecker (RCW)—a new lease on life.

Unlike other species of woodpecker, which nest in dead wood, the RCW drills cavities into living trees, specifically, living longleaf pines. Some of these nests eventually become important homes for other species—like wood ducks and squirrels, making the woodpecker a keystone species in its habitat. But Americans started cutting down longleaf pines for timber and other uses, and over the decades, forests that once blanketed the southeast disappeared.

As the pines went, so did the RCW. Its numbers plummeted from 1.5 million breeding groups prior to 1910 to just 4000 in 1995. The woodpecker’s future looked bleak—until researchers discovered a population of the bird thriving in the hostile confines of Fort Bragg—recently renamed as Fort Liberty.

Some conservationists feared that the Fort’s live-fire exercises were harming the birds, and the US Fish and Wildlife Service, which enforces the Endangered Species Act (ESA), ordered the base to cease training in the bird’s habitat. Tensions soared – until scientists made the startling discovery that the military training itself was creating the healthy RCW habitat.

Woodpecker Wars

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