Panthera New York Times Billboard from Panthera Cats on Vimeo.

On Friday, I observed a class of third graders learning about freshwater ecology at Greenwich Audubon. Is there anything more soothing than frogs and kids?

"We're trying to save the tigers..."

I wrote the following op-ed, in the form of a letter to President Obama, after an Earth Day revelation by Mrs. Obama...


Dear Mr. President:

At an Earth Day celebration at the White House on April 22nd, Mrs. Obama was asked whether there is an environmental issue of particular concern to the Obama family. This was her response:

You know, we’re big tiger-savers, because Malia’s one issue for her father is saving the tigers. So we talk about the tigers at least once a week and what he’s doing to save the tigers. He tells her he’s working on it and there are a lot of people who are thinking about it. He hasn’t come up with a sufficient answer yet, but he’s got a couple more years or so to fix this problem. But I think the Obama household, we’re trying to save the tigers.

Mr. President, knowing how devoted you are to your daughters, and to children all over the world, many of whom share Malia’s passion for tigers, I’d like to provide you with a few compelling reasons for sharing their concern, and some policy recommendations for tigers’ protection.

Why add tigers to the pressing issues on your plate? Malia is correct that they are in urgent need of “saving.” She also may know intuitively that the tiger is a metaphor for all of nature. The survival of its forest habitats across Asia is critical to efforts to mitigate and adapt to climate change.

Experts believe there were approximately 100,000 wild tigers in 1900; as of this date, tiger numbers have dropped 95 percent. India, with the largest tiger population, may have no more than 1,000 cats. The animals are caught in the crosshairs of poaching, habitat loss, and human-animal conflict. Many experts believe that at the present rate of loss, tigers in the wild will be extinct within our lifetimes.

Our planet is in the midst of a crisis of biodiversity loss so significant that scientists call it the “Sixth Extinction Event,” with the important distinction that this spasm of species loss is the first to be instigated by human beings. Tigers are just one of many species at risk, but the IUCN (World Conservation Union) gives them its “most endangered” ranking. Why focus on saving tigers, when so many species are at risk? Not only because we have less time to save them than some species, but because we get more bang for the buck in protecting them. Tigers are an umbrella species, an apex predator in need of large territories for its survival. This means that in protecting the tiger, we protect vast numbers of plant and animal species within its domain.

What’s good for the planet is good for Homo sapiens. Put another way, it has become clear that human security and ecological security are synonomous. Tigers are a case in point: they need forests, clean water, and abundance of prey to survive. Human beings, too, cannot survive without a thriving natural environment. As the world gets smaller and we see that deforestation in India, or enormous carbon footprints in the United States adversely impact populations all over the globe, we see that protecting tiger forests benefits not only tigers and the ecosystems in which they reside, but ensures clean water sources on which human populations depend, and carbon-sequestering forests our planet needs.

Finally, the tiger, as Malia knows, is one of earth’s most magnificent and iconic species. It has played a role in human cultures since Homo sapiens and Panthera tigris began their long history together. The world and we humans would be the poorer without this remarkable creature. Though the U.S. is not a tiger-range state, the tiger should not just be the concern of those countries in which it resides. The tiger is a global citizen, beloved by people all over the world. As an “indicator” species whose decline signals ecological trends dangerous to humans, the tiger deserves concerted attention.

Mr. President, there is a great deal that you can do to help bring tigers back from the brink. First, you can use your office as a “bully pulpit” from which to educate and encourage citizens and leaders. During your upcoming trip to India, I would urge you, as President Clinton did, to visit a protected area inhabited by tigers, and discuss with India’s leaders, (including Minister of Environment and Forests Jairam Ramesh, who is eager to halt the slide toward oblivion of India’s national animal), ways in which the United States can assist in protecting the species.

Second, your domestic and international leadership on climate change are urgently needed and will significantly improve the tiger’s (and our own) chances of survival. Tigers and a stable climate share a common need: healthy forests. The Sundarbans forest, an enormous tidal region shared by India and Bangladesh, contains the world’s highest-density tiger population, and is vulnerable to rising seas. Your active support for the U.N.’s Programme on Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation in Developing Countries (REDD) will aid the tiger and target carbon emissions in one fell swoop. Economists estimate that with financial assistance from the United States and other developed countries, tens of millions of people in India alone could be put to work conserving the carbon-sequestering forests in which tigers roam.

Third, most of the poaching pressure on tigers stems from the illegal wildlife trade, third in line behind international crime networks that traffic in weapons and narcotics. You can use the power of your office to encourage strict compliance with the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species (CITES).

Finally, the World Bank, through its “Global Tiger Initiative,” has taken a recent interest in promoting tiger conservation. The Bank and other international development agencies, however, have done vast harm to tiger habitats with their funding of coal mines, dams, monocultures and other ecologically destructive projects. Your leadership could be critical in helping to create a new vision of human development and security that entails protection rather than heedless exploitation of natural resources.

I hope that Malia will maintain her thoughtful pressure on behalf of tigers. Like so many wise young people around the world, she understands that environmentalism and species protection are human and planetary requirements, not “special interests.” Each day, many children like Malia are joined by adults around the world in the fight to protect the tiger and its habitat. Because of their commitment, and with your help, the tiger will continue to roam forests from Siberia to Sumatra to India, long into our children’s children’s future.

by Jennifer Scarlott, Director of International Conservation Initiatives for Sanctuary Asia, an environment and wildlife magazine and NGO based in Mumbai, India. Sanctuary runs an India-wide education and advocacy program called “Kids for Tigers.”

To Julia

The pasture, bleached and cold two weeks ago
Begins to grow in the spring light and rain;
The new grass trembles under the wind's flow.
The flock, barn-weary, comes to it again,
New to the lambs, a place their mothers know,
Welcoming, bright, and savory in its green,
So fully does the time recover it.
Nibbles of pleasure go all over it.

~ Wendell Berry, (Poem III, 1982), A Timbered Choir

May 4, 1970 - May 4, 2010

On May 4, 1970, Ohio National Guardsmen opened fire on Kent State University students protesting the war in Vietnam, and the expansion of the war into Cambodia, killing four students, Jeffrey Miller, Allison Krause, Sandra Scheuer and William Schroeder, and wounding nine. Ten days later, on May 14, two students, James Earl Green and Phillip Lafayette Gibbs, were murdered and twelve wounded by police at Jackson State College in Mississippi, under similar circumstances.

There have never been any criminal convictions in the Kent State murders.

Ronald Reagan, governor of California, regarding student protests against the war in Vietnam, several weeks before May 4, 1970: "If it takes a bloodbath, let's get it over with."

Ohio Governor James Rhodes, in reference to student protesters, at a press conference at Kent State, May 3, 1970: "They're worse than the brownshirts and the communist element and also the night riders and vigilantes. They're the worst type of people that we harbor in America. I think that we're up against the strongest, well-trained, militant, revolutionary group that has ever assembled in America."

After the massacre at Kent State, President Nixon asked H. R. Haldeman to consider implementing the Huston Plan, which would have used illegal procedures to gather information on the leaders of the anti-war movement. Named for White House aide Tom Charles Huston, the Plan, requested by Nixon in his desire for more coordination of domestic intelligence regarding "left-wing radicals" and the anti-war movement in general, called for domestic burglary, illegal electronic surveillance, and opening of mail of domestic "radicals." At one time it also called for the creation of camps in Western states where anti-war protesters would be detained. Details of the 43-page report and outline of proposed security operations came to light during the 1973 Senate Watergate hearings.

Dean Kahler was a freshman at Kent State in May 1970. During the May 4 demonstration, he lay on the ground when he heard firing, but was shot in the back. He has been paralyzed since that time. "The first card that I opened up in the intensive care unit was a very nice-looking card," recalls Dean Kahler, a high school history teacher. "But the note in it said, 'Dear communist hippie radical, I hope by the time you read this, you are dead.' "

American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) of Ohio Kent State project records for 1978 retrial of Krause vs. Rhodes

Provenance: The ACLU of Ohio Kent State Project records appear to have been promised to Yale just after the 1979 settlement. The attorneys and the families were concerned that if the materials were deposited with a quasi-governmental organization such as the Ohio Historical Society, they might be mishandled or manipulated, thus endangering the historical record -- so great was the distrust of government officials after the protracted legal battle for justice.

Photos & Quotes

Trees are earth's endless effort to speak to the listening heaven..

~ Rabindranath Tagore, Fireflies, 1928

Thanks to Public Employees for Environmental Reponsibility (PEER) for their courageous work on behalf of the environment, and against cynicism in public service.

Fed up

The following is a post to my Sanctuary Asia blog, 5/4/10.

For the thirteenth straight day, BP's blown-out oil well in the Gulf of Mexico spews out a heartbreaking 200,000 gallons of oil PER DAY. As if this stark fact weren't bad enough, the oil slick, which is a prominent feature in photographs taken by satellites in space, is spreading at peak bird migration and sea turtle nesting time in the Gulf.

There are times when it is difficult not to think of our species as a planetary scourge, as evolution gone horribly awry.

Last fall, the U.S. National Oceanic & Atmospheric Administration (NOAA is the nation's lead ocean resource agency) warned the U.S. Department of Interior, which regulates offshore oil drilling, that it was dramatically underestimating the frequency of offshore oil spills, and dangerously understating the risk and impacts of a major spill. The warnings were in response to a draft of the Obama administration's offshore drilling plans, and were published online by Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility (PEER), a whistle-blowing group.

Brushing aside his own agency's warnings, the President announced on March 31, 2010 that he would open vast areas of American coastal waters to offshore drilling. His announcement was vintage Obama: he discussed the importance of moving away from fossil-fuel dependence and toward clean energy, at the same time scolding "environmentalists" for their anti-oil extremism.

"Ultimately, we need to move beyond the tired debates of the left and the right, between business leaders and environmentalists, between those who would claim drilling is a cure all and those who would claim it has no place. "

This equally tiring argument is a favored refrain of this President. On issue after issue, and invariably where the environment is concerned, Mr. Obama proclaims the value of steering a middle path, a value he seems to cherish above taking strong policy stands that will steer the country in the right direction. But the moment after he urges a measured middle course, he sides with business interests and/or the GOP, purportedly in the interest of placating the right so as to make gains for the left, while never fighting a single battle for progressive interests.

A few days after his announcement, the President asserted that offshore drilling poses little environmental risk: "Oil rigs today generally don't cause spills. They are technologically very advanced."

I'd like to believe he regrets those words today.

Meanwhile, during the campaign, he declared:

“Now believe me, if I thought there was any evidence at all that drilling could save people money to fill up their gas tanks by this summer or next year or even the next few years, I would consider it. But it won’t. And John McCain knows that. The fact is that Senator McCain’s decision to team up with George Bush on offshore drilling violates the bipartisan concensus that we’ve had for decades that has protected Florida’s pristine coastline from drilling. This is a proposal that would only worsen our addiction to oil and put off needed investments in clean, renewable energy."

On the 40th anniversary of Earth Day, before the cataclysm in the Gulf, Mrs. Obama declared her daughter Malia's concern for wild tigers to a reporter who asked about the Obama family's interest in the environment. Somewhere else at the White House, the President was having the following exchange with Phil Radford, executive director of Greenpeace, about the Administration's declaration of support for lifting the 35-year moratorium on commercial whaling:

The President walked person to person, saying hello, as advocate after advocate threw him softball questions. I shook the President’s hand, and said: “Mr. President, I am Phil Radford from Greenpeace. We are concerned that your administration is overturning the ban on whaling.”

“I know” he replied. “I’ve seen your ads in the papers.”

“Great,” I replied. “What is your plan to change your administration’s position?

“Look,” said the president, sounding like his Saturday Night Live doppelganger, “I love whales. I will do what I can to protect them.”

“Will you reverse your administration’s position?” I asked.

The President responded, “Oh come on, don’t lobby me here right now…”

I’d made our point. There was no point in lobbying the President more. After all, Earth Day should remind us that lobbying played a minor role in securing the Clean Air Act, Clean Water Act, and ban on commercial whaling. People taking action made the difference. The 200 million people in the streets on the first Earth Day are who brought about the change. We’ll be in the streets again until President Obama lives up to his written promise to end commercial whaling.

Here's the thing: President Obama is living in the past, when environmentalism was considered a "special interest," a pesky set of issues presidents and Congress were "lobbied" about, just as they are lobbied to support National Peach Day. I've got news for you, Mr. President: "environmentalism" is survival. Not just for whales, which we're glad to hear you love. For Homo sapiens, and the planet as a whole. Radford is right. People in every country must turn up the heat, and make politicians so uncomfortable that they finally see the light.