“The truth is that we need invertebrates but they don’t need us. If human beings were to disappear tomorrow, the world would go on with little change. Gaia, the totality of life on Earth, would set about healing itself and return to the rich environmental states of a few thousand years ago. But if invertebrates were to disappear, I doubt that the human species could last more than a few months.” -E.O. Wilson, 1987
On September 29, 2021, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (USFWS) declared 23 species on the endangered species list extinct. Nationally, much attention was given to the arguably most charismatic of these: the southeast’s Ivory-billed woodpecker (Campephilusprincipalis), commonly called the Lord God Bird. While any loss of lifeform deserves its recognition, significantly less focus was paid to the eight species of freshwater mussels that also failed to be protected.
Perhaps it’s not hard to see why. Mature freshwater mussels are generally about palm-sized, and live most of their lives wedged into the rocks of river bottoms. Even if you are a person who spends time in their environments often – wading streams, you still might miss them.
“Biologists would say that your search image is for large animals,” esteemed biologist Edward O. Wilson wrote in his 1987 journal article “The Little Things That Run the World (The Importance and Conservation of Invertebrates)”. It feels more natural for most people to take notice of deer, elk, bear, cougar and the like—larger prey and predators whose population declines, growth, and migratory movements seem more perceptible for their impacts to natural and, perhaps most notably, human environments.
But freshwater mussels, and invertebrates at large, play an outsized role ecologically. As a whole, invertebrates filter our water, pollinate our food and flowers, decompose the dead, build our soil, build coral reefs — it is a challenge to imagine just how poor human lives would be without them.
While “it’s hard to say what the removal of a single species does to a food system or an ecosystem, Rich Hatfield, Conservation Biologist and Lead of Bumblebee Conservation Programs with the Xerces Society, tells me, “there’s also this principle of ecology called the rivet hypothesis, which is just this idea that if you have an airplane flying in the sky, you can start to take individual rivets out and the airplane keeps flying. But eventually there’s going to be a rivet that you pull out and the wing is going to fall off. Then you’re going to get this collapsing ecosystem. It’s hard to know what that tipping point is.”
Hatfield seems to agree with E.O. Wilson’s view of humanity’s dependence on a diverse array of invertebrates. “Nature has been figuring this out for millions of years. We [humans] are pretty new on the scene, and now we’re passing judgment on what’s valuable and what’s not?”
In 2021, the Pacific Northwest was spared official declarations of extinction. Of course, a growing human population and anthropogenic climate change poses threats to many lifeforms in our region. This is not a time to allow the “little things” to fly under our radar.
In the face of so much recent loss, maybe it will come as a surprise that The Endangered Species Act (ESA) has actually prevented the extinction of 99% of the plants and animals under its care. Scientists and conservationists in Oregon are working with this framework to seek protection for invertebrates that call our state and much of the West home.
2021 also saw the listing of Franklin’s bumblebee (Bombus franklini ) as endangered, and work is underway to evaluate the status of the Western bumblebee (Bombus occidentalis), and the Western ridged mussel (Gonideaangulate). This series will explore these unique lifeforms, the challenges they face, and the progress people are making to raise awareness.
First, we explore freshwater mussels, whose fate impacts the health of our waterways, and in the third part of this series, we look at Franklin bumblebees, an endangered pollinator. In both instances, we see the interplay of scientists in their day-to-day work, and the Endangered Species Act.
Resources & Ways to Help
- Knowledge is power: https://xerces.org/endangered-species/freshwater-mussels
- Take delight: https://www.wired.com/2015/10/absurd-creature-of-the-week-lampsilis/
- Educate the next generation: https://xerces.org/xkids
- Knowledge is power: https://www.pnwbumblebeeatlas.org/recorded-trainings.html
- Join the survey efforts: training workshops for next summer’s surveys will take place in early May and early June https://www.pnwbumblebeeatlas.org/live-events.html
- Enhance your garden: https://xerces.org/bring-back-the-pollinators
As a Solstice gift, these stories are completely free until Sunday, June 26, we hope you enjoy them.
By Ari Blatt
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