19 September 20
Fundraising Is Never Pleasant, Neither Is Oligarchy
“Oligarchy (from Greek (oligarkhía); from (olígos), meaning "few", and (arkho), meaning "to rule or to command") is a form of power structure in which power effectively rests with a small number of people. These people could be distinguished by royalty, wealth, family ties, education, corporate, or military control.”
In contrast RSN is something you control through your contributions.
Think about it.
Marc Ash
Founder, Reader Supported News
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18 September 20
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Charles Pierce | Every Newspaper Should Be Calling on Donald Trump to Resign
Charles Pierce, Esquire
Pierce writes: "It is beyond doubt that the current president has 'failed to put his nation's interests first.'"
y favorite statistic of this misbegotten era—and by "favorite," I mean the one most likely to make me drain the Earth's entire supply of whiskey—is the one that press critic Eric Boehlert likes to toss around when he reminds us that more than 100 of the nation's newspapers called for Bill Clinton to resign during the Great Penis Chase of 1998. Clinton, we were told, over and over again, had demonstrated his unfitness for the office of president because of his relationship with Monica Lewinsky. As Boehlert recalled in his essential Press Run newsletter:
"He should resign because he has resolutely failed — and continues to fail — the most fundamental test of any president: to put his nation's interests first," USA Today announced unequivocally of Bill Clinton in September 1998. "Bill Clinton should resign, echoed the Philadelphia Inquirer. "He should resign because his repeated, reckless deceits have dishonored his presidency beyond repair." The Denver Post, Washington Times, Orlando Sentinel, San Antonio Express-News, Anchorage Daily News, and Manchester (N.H.) Union Leader were among the dailies that joined the resignation chorus.
Yet, as Boehlert points out, none of these guardians of the people's liberties has called for the resignation of a president* who dishonors the presidency just by getting out of bed in the East Wing every morning. It probably wouldn't do any material good; Clinton ignored the calls for his resignation, too. But it would be a demonstration that another institution was pushing back against a criminal presidency*, the fundamental incompetence of which has contributed to the deaths of over 200,000 citizens.
The New York Times, which has not called for the president*'s resignation either, has the latest entry in a bill of indictment that now reaches from the Potomac to a spot somewhere in north Georgia.
The guidance said it was not necessary to test people without symptoms of Covid-19 even if they had been exposed to the virus. It came at a time when public health experts were pushing for more testing rather than less, and administration officials told The Times that the document was a C.D.C. product and had been revised with input from the agency’s director, Dr. Robert Redfield. But officials told The Times this week that the Department of Health and Human Services did the rewriting and then “dropped” it into the C.D.C.’s public website, flouting the agency’s strict scientific review process. “That was a doc that came from the top down, from the H.H.S. and the task force,” said a federal official with knowledge of the matter, referring to the White House task force on the coronavirus. “That policy does not reflect what many people at the C.D.C. feel should be the policy.”
As the Times notes, this isn't the first time that political hacks installed at HHS have monkeywrenched documents from the CDC regarding public safety during the pandemic. BUT WE GOT FOOTBALL AGAIN! Jesus. That any thinking human being would vote for four more years of this madness makes me wonder if Darwin wasted a lot of time.
A protest outside the Irwin County detention center in Ocilla, Georgia. Experts and lawyers said the women's lack of consent or knowledge raises severe legal and ethical issues. (photo: Jeff Amy/AP)
More Migrant Women Say They Did Not Consent to Sterilization Surgeries at ICE Detention Center
Nomaan Merchant, Associated Press
Merchant writes: "Sitting across from her lawyer at an immigration detention center in rural Georgia, Mileidy Cardentey Fernandez unbuttoned her jail jumpsuit to show the scars on her abdomen. There were three small, circular marks."
AP review finds no evidence of mass hysterectomies but files show growing allegations of operations women did not fully understand
The 39-year-old woman from Cuba was told only that she would undergo an operation to treat her ovarian cysts, but a month later, she’s still not sure what procedure she got. After Cardentey repeatedly requested her medical records to find out, Irwin county detention center gave her more than 100 pages showing a diagnosis of cysts but nothing from the day of the surgery.
“The only thing they told me was: ‘You’re going to go to sleep and when you wake up, we will have finished,”’ Cardentey said this week in a phone interview.
Cardentey kept her hospital bracelet. It has the date, 14 August, and part of the doctor’s name, Dr Mahendra Amin, a gynecologist linked this week to allegations of unwanted hysterectomies and other procedures done on detained immigrant women that jeopardize their ability to have children.
An Associated Press review of medical records for four women and interviews with lawyers revealed growing allegations that Amin performed surgeries and other procedures on detained immigrants that they never sought or didn’t fully understand.
Although some procedures could be justified based on problems documented in the records, the women’s lack of consent or knowledge raises severe legal and ethical issues, lawyers and medical experts said.
Amin has performed surgery or other gynecological treatment on at least eight women detained at Irwin county detention center since 2017, including one hysterectomy, said Andrew Free, an immigration and civil rights lawyer working with attorneys to investigate medical treatment at the detention center. Doctors on behalf of the attorneys are examining new records and more women are coming forward to report their treatment by Amin, Free said.
“The indication is there’s a systemic lack of truly informed and legally valid consent to perform procedures that could ultimately result – intentionally or unintentionally – in sterilization,” he said.
The AP’s review did not find evidence of mass hysterectomies as alleged in a widely shared complaint filed by a nurse at the detention center. Dawn Wooten alleged that many detained women were taken to an unnamed gynecologist whom she labeled the “uterus collector” because of how many hysterectomies he performed.
The complaint sparked a furious reaction from congressional Democrats and an investigation by the Department of Homeland Security’s inspector general. It also evoked comparisons to previous government-sanctioned efforts in the US to sterilize people to supposedly improve society – victims who were disproportionately poor, mentally disabled, American Indian, Black or other people of color. Thirty-three states had forced sterilization programs in the 20th century.
But a lawyer who helped file the complaint said she never spoke to any women who had hysterectomies. Priyanka Bhatt, staff attorney at the advocacy group Project South, told the Washington Post that she included the hysterectomy allegations because she wanted to trigger an investigation to determine if they were true. Wooten did not answer questions at a press conference Tuesday, and Project South did not respond to interview requests Thursday on behalf of Bhatt or Wooten.
Amin told the Intercept, which first reported Wooten’s complaint, that he has only performed one or two hysterectomies in the past three years. His attorney, Scott Grubman, said in a statement: “We look forward to all of the facts coming out, and are confident that once they do, Dr Amin will be cleared of any wrongdoing.”
Grubman did not respond to new questions Thursday.
Since 2018, US Immigration and Customs Enforcement says it found records of two referrals for hysterectomies at the jail, which is in Ocilla, Georgia, about 150 miles (240km) from Atlanta.
“Detainees are afforded informed consent, and a medical procedure like a hysterectomy would never be performed against a detainee’s will,” Dr Ada Rivera, medical director of the ICE Health Service Corps that oversees healthcare in detention, said in a statement.
LaSalle Corrections, which operates the jail, said it “strongly refutes these allegations and any implications of misconduct”.
Women housed at Irwin County detention center who needed a gynecologist were typically taken to Amin, according to medical records provided to the AP by Free and lawyer Alexis Ruiz, who represents Cardentey. Interviews with detainees and their lawyers suggest some women came to fear the doctor.
Records reviewed by the AP show one woman was given a psychiatric evaluation the same day she refused to undergo a surgical procedure known as dilation and curettage. Commonly known as a D&C, it removes tissue from the uterus and can be used as a treatment for excessive bleeding. A note written on letterhead from Amin’s office said the woman was concerned.
According to a written summary of her psychiatric evaluation, the woman said: “I am nervous about my upcoming procedure.“
The summary says she denied needing mental health care and added: “I am worried because I saw someone else after they had surgery and what I saw scared me.“
The AP also reviewed records for a woman who was given a hysterectomy. She reported irregular bleeding and was taken to see Amin for a D&C. A lab study of the tissue found signs of early cancer, called carcinoma. Amin’s notes indicate the woman agreed 11 days later to the hysterectomy.
Free, who spoke to the woman, said she felt pressured by Amin and “didn’t have the opportunity to say no“ or speak to her family before the procedure.
Doctors told the AP that a hysterectomy could have been appropriate due to the carcinoma, though there may have been less intrusive options available.
Lawyers for both women asked that their names be withheld for fear of retaliation by immigration authorities.
In another case, Pauline Binam, a 30-year-old woman who was brought to the US from Cameroon when she was two, saw Amin after experiencing an irregular menstrual cycle and was told to have a D&C, said her attorney, Van Huynh.
When she woke up from the surgery, Huynh said, she was told Amin had removed one of her two fallopian tubes, which connect the uterus to the ovaries and are necessary to conceive a child. Binam’s medical records indicate that the doctor discovered the tube was swollen.
“She was shocked and sort of confronted him on that – that she hadn’t given her consent for him to proceed with that,” Huynh said. “The reply that he gave was they were in there anyway and found there was this problem.”
While women can potentially still conceive with one intact tube and ovary, doctors who spoke to the AP said removal of the tube was likely unnecessary and should never have happened without Binam’s consent.
The doctors also questioned how Amin discovered the swollen tube because performing a D&C would not normally involve exploring a woman’s fallopian tubes.
Dr Julie Graves, a family medicine and public health physician in Florida, called the process “absolutely abhorrent”.
“It’s established US law that you don’t operate on everything that you find,” she said. “If you’re in a teaching hospital and an attending physician does something like that, it’s a scandal and they are fired.”
Binam was on the verge of deportation Wednesday, but Ice delayed it after calls from members of Congress and a request for an emergency stay by her lawyer.
Grubman, Amin’s lawyer, said in a statement that the doctor “has dedicated his adult life to treating a high-risk, underserved population in rural Georgia”.
Amin completed medical school in India in 1978 and his residency in gynecology in New Jersey. He has practiced in rural Georgia for at least three decades, according to court filings. State corporate records also show Amin is the executive of a company that manages Irwin County Hospital.
In 2013, state and federal investigators sued Amin, the hospital authority of Irwin county and a group of other doctors over allegations they falsely billed Medicare and Medicaid.
2020 Trump rally in Tulsa, Oklahoma. (photo: Evan Vucci/AP)
The United States Is Backsliding Into Autocracy Under Trump, Scholars Warn
Christopher Ingraham, The Washington Post
Ingraham writes: "Three years into the Trump administration, American democracy has eroded to a point that more often than not leads to full-blown autocracy, according to a project that tracks the health of representative government in nations around the world."
The project, called V-Dem, or Varieties of Democracy, is an effort to precisely quantify global democracy at the country level based on hundreds indicators assessed annually by thousands of individual experts. It’s one of several ongoing projects by political scientists that have registered a weakening of democratic values in the United States in recent years.
V-Dem’s findings are bracing: The United States is undergoing “substantial autocratization” — defined as the loss of democratic traits — that has accelerated precipitously under President Trump. This is particularly alarming in light of what the group’s historic data show: Only 1 in 5 democracies that start down this path are able to reverse the damage before succumbing to full-blown autocracy.
“The United States is not unique” in its decline, said Staffan I. Lindberg, a political scientist at Sweden’s University of Gothenburg and a founding director of the project. “Everything we see in terms of decline on these indicators is exactly the pattern of decline” seen in other autocratizing nations, like Turkey and Hungary, both of which ceased to be classified as democracies in recent years.
Each year, the V-Dem project asks its experts to rate their respective nations on hundreds of measures of democracy, such as the presence of legislative checks on executive power, freedom of personal expression, the civility of political discourse, free and open elections, and executive branch corruption, among others.
The United States is backsliding on all of those measures. “Executive respect for the Constitution is now at the lowest level since 1865,” said Michael Coppedge, a Notre Dame political scientist and one of the project’s chief investigators. “Corruption in the executive branch is basically the worst since Harding.”
Warren G. Harding, whose administration was tainted by corruption and scandal, is routinely ranked among the nation’s worst chief executives.
Trump, for instance, has repeatedly floated the idea of staying in office longer than the constitutionally mandated two terms. The businesses he owns have profited from repeated presidential visits, and federal courts are currently weighing whether he has violated the Constitution’s prohibition against accepting payments from foreign governments. And several current and former members of his inner circle — including Stephen K. Bannon, Paul Manafort and Roger Stone — have been arrested or indicted since he took office.
Brendan Nyhan, a political scientist at Dartmouth College, said that “experts rate U.S. democracy as getting worse on average,” but there are considerable differences in “how they characterize the severity of the decline we’ve experienced and what they expect in the future.”
Nyhan says he is most concerned about Trump’s repeated attacks on the integrity of U.S. elections. Trump recently said that “the only way we’re going to lose this election is if the election is rigged,” for instance, and habitually casts vote-by-mail efforts as inherently fraudulent. Both beliefs are false.
Nyhan is co-director of Bright Line Watch, a group that routinely surveys hundreds of political scientists to issue periodic assessments of the health of democracy in the United States. Those assessments show a post-2016 decline in democratic performance similar to V-Dem’s data.
“Democracy depends on both sides accepting the results of free and fair elections and willingly turning over power to the other side if they lose,” Nyhan said. “We’ve never had a president attack our electoral system in this way.”
Lindberg refers to presidential attacks on the pillars of democracy as “dictator drift,” and says it’s a common feature of authoritarian leaders around the world.
“That’s Erdogan in Turkey,” he said. “That’s Lukashenko in Belarus. That’s Orban in Hungary. That’s a slew of African dictators.”
He’s concerned about the rise of a sort of “sultanistic” power structure in the GOP, where the party largely abandons its core principles to support whatever the leader wants. The telltale sign of that, he said, was the GOP’s decision to not create a 2020 platform. Instead, it issued a resolution saying, among other things, that “the Republican Party has and will continue to enthusiastically support the President’s America-first agenda.”
“They just line up behind Trump,” Lindberg says. “That should ring some serious alarm bells. You have a sort of head of a family clan, without a program other than ‘we support this person.’ ”
Coppedge is particularly concerned about the possibility of election-related violence. “What I most worry about is a scenario with the incumbent president declaring victory before all votes are counted, and his followers believing any additional mail-in ballots are invalid and taking to the streets.”
“I do think there is going to be some election violence,” he added, “and I hope it won’t be widespread or long-lasting."
Lindberg is also deeply troubled by the president’s history of endorsing violence against his perceived political opponents. “This is the precursor of civil war,” he said. “Imagine that Trump loses by a margin that’s not convincing to all his supporters. He refuses to leave the office and encourages his supporters to ‘go out and defend the Constitution.' ”
Nyhan says that while these “worst-case scenarios remain unlikely,” we are in “unprecedented times” and should “remain vigilant.”
Coppedge recommends people concerned about these outcomes get involved in the electoral process to help make things better. “Volunteer to become a poll worker, or help some get-out-the-vote effort, or work with a political party to encourage turnout to make sure your side wins by a clear margin,” he said.
“I think that the chances are in the medium term, the long run things are going to work out,” he said. "But I think it’s going to be a bumpy ride between now and January.”
Lindberg is less optimistic.
“If Trump wins this election in November, democracy is gone” in the United States, he says. He gives it about two years. “It’s really time to wake up before it’s too late.”
iPhone apps. (photo: iStock)
It's Impossible for You to Know Which Apps Sell Your Location Data to Trump
Jason Koebler and Joseph Cox, VICE
Excerpt: "The Trump campaign paid $4 million to a data broker called Phunware, which collects your sensitive data from dozens of apps."
ast weekend, the New Yorker reported that the Trump campaign has spent $4 million buying voter information—including location data—from a data broker called Phunware. But it is hard, and perhaps impossible, for an ordinary user to know whether or not your physical movements and personal data are being tracked and sold to the Trump campaign (or other political campaigns), because of the opaque nature in which the data industry operates.
The Trump campaign’s work with Phunware, a company that helps “Fortune 5000 brands engage, manage, and monetize their mobile audiences,” have been widely reported. Among other things, the company makes a software development kit (SDK) that allows app manufacturers to easily collect real-time location data from users. That data can then, in some cases, be collected by Phunware and resold to other customers, who can analyze and use the data. According to the New Yorker, the Trump campaign, through a company called American Made Media Consultants, has paid roughly $4 million to Phunware in the last year for app development and data.
“They are paying for data. They are paying for targeted advertising services,” a former business partner of Phunware told the New Yorker. “Imagine if every time I open my phone I see a campaign message that Joe Biden’s America means we’re going to have war in the streets. That’s the service the Trump campaign and Brad Parscale (the Trump campaign's senior advisor for data and digital operations) have bought from Phunware. An app is just part of the package.”
Phunware’s SDK is embedded in hundreds of apps, some of which collect and sell their users’ data, others of which do not. Independent security researchers from hacking collective LaBac identified a collection of apps that connect to Phunware domains and provided a list to Motherboard, including a horoscope app, and another for a hospital in Los Angeles. But it is essentially impossible for an ordinary user to know whether the inclusion of a Phunware SDK in an app they use means their data is eventually making their way to advertisers or political campaigns. We only learn about how this data is actually traded because of whistleblowers within the industry who sometimes leak to journalists. And sometimes, we learn about the use of this data through political campaign disclosure rules.
This is because Phunware does not disclose its specific deals with app developers. Phunware declined to speak to the New Yorker for its story, but several months ago, Motherboard emailed with Randall Crowder, Phunware's chief operating officer, about how Phunware’s data is used.
When asked if location data gathered by Phunware's SDK is used for all types of the company's clients, be those political, health-focused, or any other subset, Crowder said, "Absolutely not. Some data is contained only within an application's sandbox. Other applications allow us to use their data, but only anonymously and in the aggregate." Crowder declined to comment on any specific app's data collection.
When Motherboard learned, for example, that a Los Angeles hospital’s app had a Phunware SDK installed, we reached out to the hospital, Cedars-Sinai, to learn more. The hospital explained that it needed location data to help patients navigate its campus, but that Phunware does not then provide this data to other clients.
"The Cedars-Sinai mobile app contains a feature developed by Phunware that allows visitors and patients to find their way around our main medical campus. Data is collected only if it is necessary to drive the on-campus wayfinding functionality and for no other purpose. Furthermore, Phunware has certified in writing to us that the data utilized to drive this functionality is de-identified, kept private, confidential, and segregated from all of its other business lines and customers. Any personal health information is always separate and secure, ensuring patient privacy," a Cedars-Sinai spokesperson told Motherboard in an email.
The average user—and even sophisticated security researchers—are unable to vet each and every client of each and every firm collecting and selling location data. They are also often unable to then track who those data brokers sell the data they collect to, creating a chain of data custody that is complicated, opaque, and largely out of the average user’s control. Some, but not all, data brokers explain exactly what data they collect and how they collect it, but often that information is buried in long terms of service agreements or privacy policies, and the nested structure of apps—Phunware, for example, makes an SDK that goes into apps, but is not the actual maker of most of those apps—means that it is time consuming and difficult to understand specifically what companies you are giving your data to, and what they are then doing with it.
Instead, the crucial part of the data supply chain—what happens to location data after it is collected—is not clear from the apps itself, and often is a closely-guarded secret within a data broker itself.
One alternative to having location data collected and sold to unknown parties, which is not feasible for most people, is to turn off location services on all apps, all the time. Another alternative is to not use any apps at all. But some location data, as Motherboard has shown, has historically come directly from phone companies themselves. And so, if you are using a phone at all, it is possible for your general location to be tracked, and for that data to be monetized and potentially used to advertise to you and perhaps influence your vote.
This sort of location-based voter targeting, when paired with other data, can become quite granular and is potentially very powerful and invasive.
The CEO of a location data-tracking company called Mobilewalla said on the Top Entrepreneurs podcast that, in the 2016 election, it worked with Republicans to track people's locations near Evangelical churches over the course of a six-month period, and then also tracked their locations on election day.
“We were telling the ground team who showed up to vote and who hadn’t yet,” Mobilewalla CEO Anindya Datta said in a 2017 podcast. Campaigns were then able to send alerts to presumed Evangelicals (who overwhelmingly vote Republican), reminding them to go vote.
Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) and Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA). (photo: Drew Angerer/Getty)
Senators Elizabeth Warren and Chuck Schumer Say US Should Immediately Cancel $50,000 in Student Loans for Millions of Borrowers
Jillian Berman, MarketWatch
Excerpt: "The resolution comes amid debate over relief for student loan borrowers during the coronavirus pandemic."
READ MORE
U.S. soldiers in Afghanistan. (photo: Getty)
The US "War on Terror" Has Created at Least 37 Million Refugees
Daniel Bessner, Jacobin
Excerpt: "A new study finds that America's 'war on terror' has displaced at least 37 million people around the globe. The US left has a responsibility to push an internationalism that aids the victims of American imperialism - and acts in solidarity with workers no matter their country of origin."
READ MORE
Monarch butterflies in Mexico's Oyamel forest in Michoacan, Mexico, after migrating from Canada. (photo: Luis Acosta/Getty)
Monarch Butterflies' Spectacular Migration Is at Risk - but There's an Ambitious Plan That Aims to Save It
D. André Green II, The Conversation
Green writes: "One of nature's epic events is underway: Monarch butterflies' fall migration."
Departing from all across the United States and Canada, the butterflies travel up to 2,500 miles to cluster at the same locations in Mexico or along the Pacific Coast where their great-grandparents spent the previous winter.
Human activities have an outsized impact on monarchs' ability to migrate yearly to these specific sites. Development, agriculture and logging have reduced monarch habitat. Climate change, drought and pesticide use also reduce the number of butterflies that complete the journey.
Since 1993, the area of forest covered by monarchs at their overwintering sites in Mexico has fallen from a peak of 45 acres in 1996-1997 to as low as 1.66 acres in the winter of 2013-2014. A 2016 study warned that monarchs were dangerously close to a predicted "point of no return." The 2019 count of monarchs in California was the lowest ever recorded for that group.
What was largely a bottom-up, citizen-powered effort to save the struggling monarch butterfly migration has shifted toward a top-down conversation between the federal government, private industry and large-tract landowners. As a biologist studying monarchs to understand the molecular and genetic aspects of migration, I believe this experiment has high stakes for monarchs and other imperiled species.
Millions of People Care About Monarchs
I will never forget the sights and sounds the first time I visited monarchs' overwintering sites in Mexico. Our guide pointed in the distance to what looked like hanging branches covered with dead leaves. But then I saw the leaves flash orange every so often, revealing what were actually thousands of tightly packed butterflies. The monarchs made their most striking sounds in the Sun, when they burst from the trees in massive fluttering plumes or landed on the ground in the tussle of mating.
Decades of educational outreach by teachers, researchers and hobbyists has cultivated a generation of monarch admirers who want to help preserve this phenomenon. This global network has helped restore not only monarchs' summer breeding habitat by planting milkweed, but also general pollinator habitat by planting nectaring flowers across North America.
Scientists have calculated that restoring the monarch population to a stable level of about 120 million butterflies will require planting 1.6 billion new milkweed stems. And they need them fast. This is too large a target to achieve through grassroots efforts alone. A new plan, announced in the spring of 2020, is designed to help fill the gap.
Pros and Cons of Regulation
The top-down strategy for saving monarchs gained energy in 2014, when the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service proposed listing them as threatened under the Endangered Species Act. A decision is expected in December 2020.
Listing a species as endangered or threatened triggers restrictions on "taking" (hunting, collecting or killing), transporting or selling it, and on activities that negatively affect its habitat. Listing monarchs would impose restrictions on landowners in areas where monarchs are found, over vast swaths of land in the U.S.
In my opinion, this is not a reason to avoid a listing. However, a "threatened" listing might inadvertently threaten one of the best conservation tools that we have: public education.
It would severely restrict common practices, such as rearing monarchs in classrooms and back yards, as well as scientific research. Anyone who wants to take monarchs and milkweed for these purposes would have to apply for special permits. But these efforts have had a multigenerational educational impact, and they should be protected. Few public campaigns have been more successful at raising awareness of conservation issues.
The Rescue Attempt
To preempt the need for this kind of regulation, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service approved a Nationwide Candidate Conservation Agreement for Monarch Butterflies. Under this plan, "rights-of-way" landowners – energy and transportation companies and private owners – commit to restoring and creating millions of acres of pollinator habitat that have been decimated by land development and herbicide use in the past half-century.
The agreement was spearheaded by the Rights-of-Way Habitat Working Group, a collaboration between the University of Illinois Chicago's Energy Resources Center, the Fish and Wildlife Service and over 40 organizations from the energy and transportation sectors. These sectors control "rights-of-way" corridors such as lands near power lines, oil pipelines, railroad tracks and interstates, all valuable to monarch habitat restoration.
Under the plan, partners voluntarily agree to commit a percentage of their land to host protected monarch habitat. In exchange, general operations on their land that might directly harm monarchs or destroy milkweed will not be subject to the enhanced regulation of the Endangered Species Act – protection that would last for 25 years if monarchs are listed as threatened. The agreement is expected to create up to 2.3 million acres of new protected habitat, which ideally would avoid the need for a "threatened" listing.
Many questions remain. Scientists are still learning about factors that cause monarch population decline, so it is likely that land management goals will need to change over the course of the agreement, and partner organizations will have to adjust to those changes.
Oversight of the plan will fall primarily to the University of Illinois, and ultimately to the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service. But it's not clear whether they will have the resources they need. And without effective oversight, the plan could allow parties to carry out destructive land management practices that would otherwise be barred under an Endangered Species Act listing.
A Model for Collaboration
This agreement could be one of the few specific interventions that is big enough to allow researchers to quantify its impact on the size of the monarch population. Even if the agreement produces only 20% of its 2.3 million acre goal, this would still yield nearly half a million acres of new protected habitat. This would provide a powerful test of the role of declining breeding and nectaring habitat compared to other challenges to monarchs, such as climate change or pollution.
Scientists hope that data from this agreement will be made publicly available, like projects in the Monarch Conservation Database, which has tracked smaller on-the-ground conservation efforts since 2014. With this information we can continue to develop powerful new models with better accuracy for determining how different habitat factors, such as the number of milkweed stems or nectaring flowers on a landscape scale, affect the monarch population.
North America's monarch butterfly migration is one of the most awe-inspiring feats in the natural world. If this rescue plan succeeds, it could become a model for bridging different interests to achieve a common conservation goal.
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