In the United States, attention to the protection of natural areas and local biodiversity is growing, but there is still a great deal of work to be done.
The United States is home to more than 1,300 species of animals and plants at risk of extinction, and around 40 per cent of its land and marine areas constitute protected zones: today, the major issue of biodiversity is returning to the centre of the debate, thanks in part to several positive signs recorded in recent years and to President Biden's plans to encourage environmental conservation efforts.
With an executive order signed on 27 January, just one week after taking office, Joe Biden launched the 30 by 30 programme, a concrete commitment aimed at protecting 30 per cent of the United States' marine and inland areas by 2030.
At present, around 26 per cent of the American coastline is considered protected territory, while the figure drops to 12 per cent for inland areas. In order to honour the commitment made, therefore, over the next ten years it will be necessary to protect an area of nearly two million square kilometres.
The benefits would be enormous both in terms of slowing climate change and in terms of safeguarding biodiversity, a subject that is as current as it is vast and delicate. A United Nations study estimates that one million species of animals and plants are currently at risk of extinction worldwide, a crisis driven by the profound changes imposed by humans on natural environments, the excessive pace of hunting and agricultural practices, pollution and global warming.
In recent weeks, some good news has helped bring the issue of biodiversity back to the centre of national discussion. Over the past ten years, the number of bald eagles – also known as bald eagles, the country's national animal – has quadrupled in the United States, rising from around 72,000 individuals in 2009 to more than 300,000. The result is particularly remarkable when one considers that the species was at risk of extinction until last century: in 1963, only 417 individuals were counted.
Much of the damage was attributable to the widespread use of DDT, a pesticide used after the Second World War that contaminated waterways and poisoned the eagles, causing them to lay eggs with very fragile shells. The use of DDT was banned in the US from 1972, and bald eagles were removed from the list of endangered species in 2007.
In California, meanwhile, a company active in the wind energy sector is working hard to protect the local condors, a species today considered endangered. The company in question is Avangrid Renewables, which currently operates 126 wind turbines in the Tehachapi mountains, north of Los Angeles. The blades, which have a diameter of nearly 80 metres, pose a danger to condors, which could inadvertently strike them while in flight.
Although there are currently no reports of condors killed by wind turbines at the Avangrid Renewables facility, to offset any future losses the company has made arrangements to fund the captive breeding of six condors, an operation that will cost 527,000 dollars over three years. Some environmentalists, however, are sceptical and argue that rather than compensating for deaths, solutions capable of preventing them should be sought, while simultaneously addressing the collateral problems caused by the facilities, such as the loss of natural habitat for local species.
The British newspaper the Guardian reported that around one hundred individuals currently reside in the turbine area, all part of a breeding programme launched in the late 1980s by the American Fish and Wildlife Service (FWS).
During the presidency of Donald Trump, only 25 species were placed under protection, while ten remained in a "regulatory purgatory": they were recognised as being at risk, but due to a lack of funding they were not added to the official list of protected species. Among these are the monarch butterfly, the spotted owl and the gopher tortoise. In a press release, Noah Greenwald, endangered species director at the Centre for Biological Diversity, stated: "The past four years have been a dark period for wildlife."
On 4 February, Biden postponed the entry into force of a new regulation, approved by his predecessor, that would have drastically curtailed the government's powers in protection efforts for more than a thousand species of wild North American birds.
Despite the progress being concrete and promising, there is still a great deal of work to do to protect biodiversity across a territory as vast and varied as that of the United States. In Florida, for example, in recent weeks dozens of sea turtles have washed up on shore in worrying condition and unable to move in the water, displaying lethargy and low glucose levels. Experts at the state's animal rescue centres are studying the causes of this situation and the possible remedies.
Also in Florida, in the first three months of 2021, 539 manatees died: a worrying number, especially when compared with the 637 total deaths recorded throughout the whole of 2020. The majority of individuals were found in the Indian River Lagoon area, between Orlando and Miami, a zone that is home to more than 4,000 species of animals and plants and is therefore particularly important from the point of view of biodiversity.