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Envisioning a Pro-Animal Foreign Policy
Various animal activists and thinkers answer the question: What would a pro-animal foreign policy, that we could plausibly get politicians to adopt, look like?
Aug 30, 2026
Some years back, I was toying with the idea of writing a book-length history of World War II from the perspective of wild and domesticated animals. I bought a number of relevant texts for research, like The Long Shadows: A Global Environmental History of the Second World War, edited by Simo Laakkonen, Richard P. Tucker, and Timo Vuorisalo. Ultimately, the project was more ambitious than what I was capable of, so I set it aside.
Still, I remained interested in the question which, at least partially, inspired my focus on the topic—namely, what would a pro-animal foreign policy, that we could plausibly get politicians to adopt, look like? Recently, I sought to ask various animal activists and thinkers that question. I had hoped to feature a broader range of figures. Nevertheless, I’m very grateful to all of the people who took the time to answer.
pattrice jones is a co-founder of VINE Sanctuary as well as an ecofeminist scholar and writer. VINE Sanctuary is an LGBTQ-led farmed animal refuge working for social and environmental justice as well as animal liberation. Prior to co-founding the sanctuary, jones worked as a tenant organizer and anti-racist educator. Her books include The Oxen at the Intersection and Bird’s-Eye Views: Queer Queries About Activism, Animals, and Identity.
“Countless animals are facing literally existential crises due to climate change, so the easiest animal-friendly foreign policy to promote would be to rejoin and rejuvenate international efforts to cooperatively do everything possible to address the climate emergency,” jones said. “I say ‘easiest’ because many—perhaps the majority—of people in the US already support efforts in that direction. Bonus points for bringing (a) diet and (b) the viewpoints of animals themselves into high-level international conversations about climate solutions.”
She pointed out wars kill animals and destroy their habitats, so a pro-animal foreign policy would necessarily be pro-peace. jones called for an end to giving or selling weapons to all countries and groups, aside from those engaged in legitimate self-defense. She wants to prohibit war unless the conflict was approved by domestic supermajorities and a majority of members of the United Nations.
“A vaccine for bird flu exists but has been blocked by international trade concerns of the poultry industry,” jones continued. “Not only farmed birds but also wild birds by the billions have died and will die. The risk for some wild bird species is, again, existential. The US should broker an international agreement so that this vaccine is available to all, including wild bird rehabbers who could begin to make a difference by vaccinating every bird who comes in for care for any reason. Foreign aid should include funds for the manufacture and distribution of this vaccine at scale.”
Martin Smedjeback is the chairperson of Animal Save Sweden. He campaigns for animal rights and the climate by giving presentations, facilitating workshops, participating in open rescues of animals, blockading oil transports, occasionally spending time in prison, taking photos, and shooting videos. Smedjeback argued the European Union should help accelerate the development of cultivated meat and levy higher taxes on traditional animal products.
“We need significantly more investment in alternative protein research,” he said. “Our environment, health, and animal welfare depend on a new food system where protein no longer originates from animals. We must develop plant-based foods and cultivated meat—produced from animal cells without harming the animal—that compete directly with conventional meat on taste and price. This transition is essential to tackling the climate crisis, reducing the risk of future pandemics, and curbing antibiotic overuse.”
Emilia A. Leese is an author, rewilder, and podcast host exploring the intersections of morality, food, and our relationship with the environment. She wrote Think Like a Vegan: Embracing Ethics in a Plant-Powered World. Leese believes a pro-animal foreign policy would be indistinguishable from a pro-animal domestic policy, and pushed back on the notion nonhuman activists should take into consideration existing political reality.
“We must abandon the mirage of ‘plausible’ reform within a system which is actively hostile against other animals,” she said, “Instead, we must demand radical change and reframe our current property-based utility to co-existence. This can be achieved by ascribing legal personhood to all other animals, such as is given to people and corporate or other legal entities. Or through a non-anthropocentric standard of beingness, like that developed by Professor Maneesha Deckha.”
Barry Kent MacKay is an artist, writer, and conservationist who has worked in different capacities for Born Free USA, the Animal Alliance of Canada, Zoocheck, the Animal Protection Party of Canada, Species Survival Network, the Toronto Humane Society, the Canadian Federation of Humane Societies, and others groups.
“History shows that while great reforms may seem fairly spontaneous—the result of a tipping point having been reached—there are incremental steps to get there,” MacKay said, putting forward a number of potential foreign policy goals. “I think the connection between Covid-19 and mustelids opens an opportunity for bans on mink farming, locally, and the import of live mustelids from other countries.”
Merritt Clifton is editor of the Animals 24-7 blog. Previously, he was news editor of the Animals’ Agenda magazine, editor of the Animal People newspaper, and editor of the annual Watchdog Report on Animal Charities. Working as a journalist since 1968, Clifton has reported as a foreign correspondent from approximately 40 different countries.
“The simplest, easiest thing to do would be to enforce [the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora] and other relevant international treaties as written,” he said. “There are so many UN-brokered treaties relevant to animal welfare that I can’t even remember them all off the top of my head, also including the [International Whaling Commission] treaty, Treaty of Sea, several on various aspects of zoonotic disease, etc., but the US, though a signatory to practically all of them, has a terrible enforcement record.”
Moritz Stumpe is the executive director of Animal Advocacy Africa, which is trying to stop the spread of factory farming on the continent. He is based in Germany but travels regularly. Stumpe views his organization as a capacity builder and a bridge between the African and international animal protection movements.
He argued the same welfare standards should be applied to imported and domestic products. “This kind of policy should have broad support since it protects domestic farmers,” Stumpe said. “A similar principle applies to equipment that was used for practices that are prohibited in the Global North, like battery cages in Europe, not being exported to the Global South, where battery cages are still permitted.” He added Global North countries shouldn’t finance development projects in the Global South that promote factory farms.
S. Marek Muller is an associate professor of Communication Studies at Texas State University. They are the author of Impersonating Animals: Rhetoric, Ecofeminism, and Animal Rights Law and the forthcoming Soy Boy Beta Cuck: Primal Rhetoric and the Rise of Right-Wing Carnivorism. Their research centers discourses of animal rights and welfare as well as alt-protein biotechnologies.
“Sometimes imperialist tendencies get combined with genuine devotion to animal welfare and protection such that ‘our’ kind of animal relations are considered superior to ‘theirs’ in a way that ends up quite problematic in practice,” Muller said. “Take zoonotic disease in the cases of Ebola and Covid-19 and how, respectively, bushmeat and wet markets became the subjects of international scrutiny and denizens of non-Western countries were villainized as unsanitary, deviant, and cruel to animals.”
Muller noted there wasn’t much introspection in Western countries about industrial agriculture and its ties to zoonotic diseases and animal suffering. They added the far-right has used arguments about animal cruelty to demonize various human populations, for instance, by framing specific forms of religious slaughter as evidence of the inferiority of adherents to that faith.
“I'd say an important element of a pro-animal foreign policy involves the nation-state having humbleness about its own complicity in the animal-industrial complex, noting how being ‘pro’ animal will involve work from all parties in a foreign policy relationship, not a top-down relationship where the ‘civilized’ country ‘teaches’ the other country how to be,” Muller said. “I'm not talking about simplified cultural relativism, but rather an understanding of mutuality and dialogue where individual nations' individual contexts allow for distinct forms of animal protection that may not be a one-size-fits all situation.”
John Patrick is a co-founder of Scotland for Animals, a former member of the Scottish Parliament Cross-Party Animal Welfare Group, and a former Scottish Socialist Party animal-rights spokesman. He thinks foreign cooperation and assistance should be dependent on basic nonhuman welfare reforms with effective deterrents.
“Governments and alliances are able and willing to sanction other nations for a multitude of reasons,” he said. “They are also very keen to intervene at a diplomatic level on behalf of wealth and industry. They can and should apply this same pressure and zeal for failing or refusing to act on [the issue of animal protection].”
A longtime nonhuman activist, who previously founded Animal Outlook and worked at Humane World for Animals, Paul Shapiro is the author of Clean Meat: How Growing Meat Without Animals Will Revolutionize Dinner and the World. He believes the three most consequential pro-animal foreign policy goals would be to end United States financing for the global expansion of intensive animal agriculture, make the development of alternative proteins a food-security priority, and put enforceable animal-welfare provisions into trade agreements.
“Those would likely help vastly more animals than the symbolically attractive approach of concentrating foreign policy on dog meat, trophy hunting, or a handful of notorious festivals,” Shapiro said. “A pro-animal foreign policy would use American money and market access to change systems.”
Matthew A. King is the president and co-founder of the Christian Animal Rights Association. He has written a growing number of books which address nonhuman ethics from a faith-based perspective. His latest text is Pride Goes Before Destruction: Human Vanity, Animal Agriculture, and the New Covenant Solution.
“A pro-animal foreign policy would mirror the legal framework established domestically by measures like California’s Prop 12 and Massachusetts' Question 3, ensuring that international trade and imports of animal products are permitted only when they meet rigorous, humane welfare standards,” King said. “Additionally, a practical step would be redirecting US Agency for International Development funds away from industrial factory farming models and instead investing in sustainable, plant-based agricultural infrastructure abroad.”
Katherine Perlo is the author of Kinship and Killing: The Animal in World Religions. She has worked as a typist, typesetter, accompanist, piano teacher, and academic proofreader. Later in life, Perlo earned a doctoral degree in philosophy, choosing the subject in order to promote animal rights. While born in the United States, she lives in Scotland.
“Veganism can be promoted, using standard foreign policy mechanisms, through the perspective of land,” Perlo said. “Agricultural support, through subsidies, import-export policies, and aid, could go to stock-free food production along with human-socially beneficial land projects, as an essential part of land reform and land management.”
Itai Roffman, PhD, an evolutionary anthropologist and conservationist, is a senior lecturer, researcher, and co-executive director of the Jane Goodall Institute Israel. He established the Mali Chimpanzee Cultural Preservation, Rehabilitation and Tribal Heritage League, dedicated to initiation of tribal protected reservations for chimpanzees and other critically endangered species, via community-led ecological restoration.
“Rainforest destruction is a global catastrophe, as they are Earth's lungs,” Roffman said. “Factory farming as cause of zoonotic pathogens and spread of lethal epidemics is also a global concern. It pollutes ground water and rivers. Governments should work together to find technological alternatives to meat from slaughter, such as promoting commercially sound cultured meat from cells."
Marco Maurizi wrote Beyond Nature: Animal Liberation, Marxism, and Critical Theory. He is particularly interested in attempts to understand nonhuman protection as part of a wider left-wing project, rather than an isolated ethical issue. Maurizi teaches philosophy and history in Italian high schools, while collaborating with the University of Rome Tor Vergata.
“A plausible pro-animal foreign policy,” he said, “could include ending subsidies and other forms of state support for industrial animal agriculture; incorporating strong restrictions on animal exploitation into international trade agreements; opposing the expansion of factory farming through international development and investment programs; strengthening international action against wildlife trafficking and industrial fishing; and redirecting development aid toward plant-based and ecologically sustainable forms of agriculture.”
Spencer Roberts is a science writer, ecologist, musician, and engineer. In his journalistic work, he focuses on the climate crisis, marine life, and animal agriculture. Roberts’ work has been published in Wired, The Intercept, Jacobin, and elsewhere. He pointed out fishing is the largest source of human-caused animal suffering and premature death.
“Ending the subsidization of high seas and distant water fishing would not only save countless billions of animals, but would extend an olive branch in foreign policy, deescalating the ‘arms race‘ of competition for catch and hegemony of the high seas,” Roberts said. “These subsidies could be redirected to countries who endured United States military occupations, many to this day, particularly in the Pacific. Many small island nations derive a majority of their national revenue from licenses to foreign fleets to plunder their waters.”
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Hey Trump, Our Ocean Isn't for Sale
We should be spending America's 250th anniversary lifting up our shared natural and cultural heritage. Instead, the Trump administration is spending this consequential year by selling out nature on land and sea.
Jul 02, 2026
As the United States approaches its 250th year as a nation, the festivities are widespread in DC. But even as Americans prepare to celebrate, the Trump administration is quietly working to expose some of our most treasured ocean places to harmful activities like mining, drilling, and industrial fishing.
We should be spending this anniversary lifting up our shared natural and cultural heritage. Instead, the Trump administration is spending this consequential year trashing the very idea of shared heritage by erasing history and selling out nature on land and sea. While there has been extensive coverage about how this erasure is playing out on land, the administration is also aggressively selling out our ocean heritage.
Having worked in the Biden administration and now both leading national conservation coalitions, we hear from communities across the country every day, who are trying to protect the ocean and coasts they love and depend on.
And what we hear is that communities don’t like what they are seeing from the Trump administration. They don’t want to be cut off from their own ocean backyards by corporate pollution. They don’t want dirty and destructive industry off their coasts. And they especially don’t want the Trump administration selling off public lands and waters to the highest bidder.
All of us who love the ocean have a chance now to be a part of the alliance to save its future.
In the Pacific Ocean, expedited permits for deep-sea mining make it easier to sell off the right to mine around the Northern Mariana Islands, Guam, and American Samoa. Thousands of people in these US territories have made it clear that they oppose these mining ventures because these companies use unproven technology that jeopardizes their livelihoods. Our coalitions have engaged tens of thousands of people voicing their opposition, yet the administration has continued the process of selling off the seafloor to mining companies with little benefit to the communities that bear the risks.
The expansion of offshore oil and gas leases, which would open 34 new sales in waters off the coast of Alaska, California, and Florida, would also benefit just a handful of fossil fuel companies. In one fell swoop, they would sell out the climate; introduce the constant possible threat of an oil spill; and further threaten local fishing, recreation, and subsistence.
Reopening protected waters to industrial fishing is the same short-sighted story. Like our national parks on land, marine national monuments are protected as special places we safeguard for our children and grandchildren to enjoy. They are home to spectacular wildlife and important cultural heritage and history. However, Trump’s executive orders will lead to all of these monuments opening to industrial fishing—the largest rollback of protected areas in US history—endangering these special places and the diverse creatures therein.
Meanwhile, the federal workforce focused on public lands and waters has been decimated. If they weren’t fired through budget-slashing with the planning and accuracy of a 14-year-old playing laser tag, they quit to avoid carrying out unconscionable actions. Many of the staff who had relationships with communities are no longer in government service, replaced with corporate insiders.
These actions are as unpopular as they are destructive. Loving the ocean is as unique and universal as the American experience, and we relate to it in countless ways for sustenance, livelihoods, spiritual renewal, recreation, and more: the thrill of catching a fish for dinner, the magic of watching a whale breach, the way that just the smell of salty water can put us in a better mood. From the lush mangrove forests of the Florida Keys, to vibrant coral reefs of the central Pacific, to the rocky coastlines of New England, or the enchanting tidepools of the West Coast, there’s no reason to let the administration run roughshod over these simple, profound pleasures.
Collectively, we can push back on the Trump administration’s attack on the ocean. We’ve seen this administration abandon projects before, including the DOGE program. All of us who love the ocean have a chance now to be a part of the alliance to save its future.
For the last 250 years, past generations fought to protect our coasts and waters.
Now, it’s up to us to keep that tradition alive.
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62,000 African Penguins Starving to Death Highlights Humanity-Driven Extinction Crisis
"If a species as iconic as the African penguin is struggling to survive," said one researcher, "it raises the question of how many other species are disappearing without us even noticing."
Dec 05, 2025
A study published this week about tens of thousands of starving African penguins is highlighting what scientists warn is the planet's sixth mass extinction event, driven by human activity, and efforts to save as many species as possible.
Researchers from the South African Department of Forestry, Fisheries, and the Environment (DFFE), the United Kingdom's University of Exeter, and other institutions examined a pair of breeding colonies north of Cape Town, South Africa, and published their findings Thursday in Ostrich: Journal of African Ornithology.
"These two sites are two of the most important breeding colonies historically—holding around 25,000 (Dassen) and around 9,000 (Robben) breeding pairs in the early 2000s. As such, they are also the locations of long-term monitoring programs," said study co-author Azwianewi Makhado from the DFFE in a statement.
As the study explains: "African Penguins moult annually, coming ashore and fasting for 21 days, when they shed and replace all their feathers. Failure to fatten sufficiently to moult, or to regain condition afterwards, results in death."
The team found that "between 2004 and 2011, the sardine stock off west South Africa was consistently below 25% of its peak abundance, and this appears to have caused severe food shortage for African penguins, leading to an estimated loss of about 62,000 breeding individuals," said co-author and Exeter associate professor Richard Sherley.
The paper notes that "although some adults moulted at a colony to the southeast, where food may have been more plentiful, much of the mortality likely resulted from failure of birds to fatten sufficiently to moult. The fishery exploitation rate of sardines west of Cape Agulhas was consistently above 20% between 2005 and 2010."
Sherley said that "high sardine exploitation rates—that briefly reached 80% in 2006—in a period when sardine was declining because of environmental changes likely worsened penguin mortality."
Humanity's reliance on fossil fuels is warming ocean water and impacting how salty it is. For the penguins' prey, said Sherley, "changes in the temperature and salinity of the spawning areas off the west and south coasts of South Africa made spawning in the historically important west coast spawning areas less successful, and spawning off the south coast more successful."
The researcher also stressed that "these declines are mirrored elsewhere," pointing out that the species' global population has dropped nearly 80% in the last three decades. With fewer than 10,000 breeding pairs left, the African penguin was uplisted to "critically endangered" on the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) Red List of Threatened Species last year.
Sherley told Mongabay at the time that the IUCN update "highlights a much bigger problem with the health of our environment."
"Despite being well-known and studied, these penguins are still facing extinction, showing just how severe the damage to our ecosystems has become," he said. "If a species as iconic as the African penguin is struggling to survive, it raises the question of how many other species are disappearing without us even noticing. We need to act now—not just for penguins, but to protect the broader biodiversity that is crucial for the planet's future."
Looks like the combined effects of climate change and over fishing are key factors in decimating the populations of these penguins.www.washingtonpost.com/climate-envi...
[image or embed]
— Margot Hodson (@margothodson.bsky.social) December 5, 2025 at 4:46 AM
Fearful that the iconic penguin species could be extinct within a decade, the conservation organizations BirdLife South Africa and the Southern African Foundation for the Conservation of Coastal Birds (SANCCOB) last year pursued a first-of-its-kind legal battle in the country, resulting in a settlement with the commercial fishing sector and DFFE.
The settlement, reached just days before a planned court hearing this past March, led to no-go zones for the commercial anchovy and sardine fishing vessels around six penguin breeding colonies: Stony Point, as well as Bird, Dassen, Dyer, Robben, and St. Croix islands.
"The threats facing the African penguin are complex and ongoing—and the order itself requires monitoring, enforcement, and continued cooperation from industry and the government processes which monitor and allocate sardine and anchovy populations for commercial purposes," Nicky Stander, head of conservation at SANCCOB, said in March.
The study also acknowledges hopes that "the revised closures—which will operate year-round until at least 2033—will decrease mortality of African penguins and improve their breeding success at the six colonies around which they have been implemented."
"However," it adds, "in the face of the ongoing impact of climate change on the abundance and distribution of their key prey, other interventions are likely to be needed."
Lorien Pichegru, a marine biology professor at South Africa's Nelson Mandela University who was not involved in the study, called the findings "extremely concerning" and warned the Guardian that the low fish numbers require urgent action "not only for African penguins but also for other endemic species depending on these stocks."
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Canadian Man Accuses US Coast Guard of Capsizing His Boat and Jailing Him on Bogus Illegal Fishing Claims
"We treat our pets better than they treated him," said the Canadian man's wife.
Jul 24, 2025
A Canadian man is accusing the United States Coast Guard of capsizing his boat and illegally detaining him on bogus claims that he was fishing in American waters.
CTV News reported Wednesday that 60-year-old Edouard Lallemand of Quebec says he was fishing near Venise-en-Québec, which is a little less than 10 miles from the U.S. border, when a U.S. Coast Guard boat approached him and asked him to turn off his boat's engine.
After he complied with this request, Lallemand told CTV News, the Coast Guard members informed him that he was fishing illegally in U.S. waters despite the fact that he had fished in that exact same location for years and had never encountered any problems. Lallemand insisted he was in Canada and then started his engine and indicated to the Coast Guard officials that he would be happy to talk with them further on shore.
However, the Coast Guard vessel followed Lallemand's boat closely and seemed to be trying to push it toward U.S. waters, which he said caused it to capsize. Even after he fell into the water, Lallemand said, the Coast Guard members seemed more concerned about securing his boat than helping him out.
"They're tying my boat to their boat," he said. "They're not even taking care of me. The third time I went down, coming out with water in my mouth, spitting it out, I said throw me a buoy."
The Coast Guard members pulled him out onto their boat and proceeded to handcuff him and place him in the custody of U.S. Customs and Border Protection officers who brought him to a detention facility, where they fingerprinted him and locked him in a cell.
"I said are you arresting me? No sir you're detained," he explained to CTV. "I said detained for what? I said you aggressed me. I didn't do nothing to you guys, I didn't even hit you guys."
He was released from detention after two hours and returned to Canada. However, he said his experience was bad enough that it should be a warning to fellow Canadian boaters.
"I want the people to know and to be aware: Stay away from the border," he said. "Even if it's 500, 600 feet from there."
Lallemand's wife, Darlene Fielding, told CTV she was "flabbergasted" at the treatment her husband received at the hands of the Coast Guard.
"We treat our pets better than they treated him," she said.
In a statement given to CTV, the Coast Guard acknowledged capsizing Lallemand's boat but insisted that he was to blame.
"While the Coast Guard's 29-foot response boat... was alongside the vessel, the operator put the vessel in motion and ignored commands to maintain course and speed for boarding purposes," the Coast Guard said. "The vessel then made an abrupt starboard turn and struck the port bow of the Coast Guard small-boat... approximately 65 yards south of the U.S./Canadian border. The collision caused the vessel to capsize, putting the operator in the water."
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President Biden: Make Your LNG Pause Permanent to Save Gulf Fishing Families
It’s up to the administration to prevent export terminals from destroying what’s left of Louisiana’s seafood industry.
Jun 07, 2024
In January, the White House announced a pause on liquefied natural gas terminals, called “LNGs” in industry jargon. Though it ruffled feathers in the oil and gas industry, the “pause” did little to stop their ongoing operations; it just meant that the federal government was taking a break from approving new export terminals—facilities that have yet to be built. For those of us who make a living fishing and shrimping here on the Gulf of Mexico, the pause has made little visible difference.
Our coastline and fisheries are already littered with gas export terminals. To build the plants—each larger than a football stadium—the industry digs up wetlands and pours concrete, destroying estuaries, fishing grounds, and the coast that protects us from storms. To make room for massive supertankers, the gas export industry digs up and dredges the shallows near shore, which has destroyed the habitats of Louisiana oysters and shrimp. My fellow fishermen and I are forced out of the way when supertankers cut through our fishing grounds. We have to pull up our nets, and we lose at least half a day’s work.
Every part of the operation is disruptive and destructive to our trade. Where we used to be able to pull up enough shrimp to bring to market, the dredging and shipping is so disruptive to aquatic life, it barely leaves enough shrimp behind for us to feed ourselves and our families. It’s not just the industry’s disruptions to our work though; it’s their outright attack on Louisiana’s fishing community.
My fellow fishermen and I are doing our part to hold the LNG companies accountable... But we cannot and should not have to fight this Goliath alone.
Last month, I witnessed a tanker barging through our local waters where shrimpers and fishermen usually put in. The ship whipped past us fishermen at such a speed that it caused a wake taller than the nearby boats. One of them—the one closest to the tanker—was sunk completely by wake, costing the fishermen who own it an untold sum and threatening the lives of everyone on board. To this day, none of us have heard of the tanker’s owner reaching out with an apology or an offer of compensation.
A couple of weeks after that boat was sunk, I went down to the dock to start my day, only to find my own boat sinking in shallow water. That morning and the night before, we hadn’t had any rain. My boat did not have any leaks. Yet somehow, on a clear day, my seaworthy vessel was almost completely submerged.
I’ll never know exactly how this happened to my boat, or who may have caused it to happen, but what I do know is that this industry has created an air of fear and intimidation. What I can say with certainty is that the more the industry encroaches on our fishing grounds, and the more that local fishermen like me speak out, the more accidents seem to happen.
I’ve lost thousands of dollars because of the industry’s actions—and that doesn’t include lost income from the depleted stocks of fish and shrimp, or from the lost days of work. One time, a tanker came through with skimmers in the water near shore, causing a sucking action that pulled in water from every direction. I watched helplessly as the vessel pulled the entire aluminum frame for my fishing nets, crumpling it like paper. To get it repaired, I had to take a day off work, drive nearly 200 miles round trip, and spend thousands on aluminum welding.
Another time, an LNG dredger was parked near our dock. The suction from the dredge almost caused me to capsize and lose everything. When I told the dredge operator what had just happened, he yelled at me, “Ain’t my effin’ problem.”
He didn’t say “effin.’”
That’s been the attitude of the LNG export industry since they’ve come here. They’ve taken our homes, our fisheries, and our livelihoods, and treated us like we’re just a nuisance standing in their way.
My fellow fishermen and I are doing our part to hold the LNG companies accountable. We’re tracking these assaults and keeping records of the decline in our fish, shrimp, and oyster catches. But we cannot and should not have to fight this Goliath alone.
This administration must make its pause on LNG export approvals permanent and direct the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission to stop rubber-stamping permits for new terminals. It’s up to them to prevent this industry from destroying what’s left of Louisiana’s seafood industry, a cornerstone of culinary culture in America. We need President Joe Biden to see reason and save the Gulf’s fishing families.
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Frontline Fishers Force Early End to New Orleans Gas Conference
"We want our oystering back. We want our shrimp back. We want our dredges back. We want LNG to leave us alone," one participating fisherman said.
Jan 19, 2024
Frontline fishers and environmental justice advocates forced the meeting of the Americas Energy Summit in New Orleans to end two hours early on Friday, as they protested what the buildout of liquefied natural gas infrastructure is doing to Gulf Coast ecosystems and livelihoods.
Fishers and shrimpers from southwest Louisiana say that new LNG export terminals are destroying habitat for marine life while the tankers make it unsafe for them to take their boats out in the areas where fishing is still possible. The destruction is taking place in the port of Cameron, which once saw the biggest catch of any fishing area in the U.S.
"We want our oystering back. We want our shrimp back. We want our dredges back. We want LNG to leave us alone," Cameron fisherman Solomon Williams Jr. said in a statement. "With all the oil and all the stuff they're dumping in the water, it's just killing every oyster we can get. Makes it so we can't sell our shrimp."
The protest was part of the growing movement against LNG export infrastructure, which is both harming the health and environment of Gulf Coast residents and risks worsening the climate crisis: Just one of the more than 20 proposed new LNG terminals, Venture Global's Calcasieu Pass 2, would release 20 times the lifetime emissions of the controversial Willow oil drilling project in Alaska. Activists have also planned a sit-in at the Department of Energy in Washington, D.C., from February 6-8 to demand the agency stop approving new LNG export terminals.
The Americas Energy Summit is one of the largest international meetings of executives involved in the exporting of natural gas. More than 40 impacted fishers brought their boats to New Orleans to park them outside the Ernest N. Morial Convention Center, where the meeting was being held. After a march from Jackson Square, the fishers revved their engines to disrupt the meeting. One attendee said the disruption forced the meeting to conclude at 11 am ET, two hours earlier than scheduled.
"Wen you're here on the ground, seeing it with your own eyes and talking to the people... it feels like looking into the devil's eyes."
"They going to run us out of the channel and if they run us out of the channel then it's over," Phillip Dyson Sr., a fisherman who attended the protest with his children, grandchildren, and great-grandchildren, said in a statement. "We fight for them. We fight for my grandson. Been a fighter all my life. I ain't going to stop now. So long as I got breathe I'm going to fight for my kids. They are the future. Fishing industry been here hundreds of years and now they're trying to stop us. I don't think it's right."
The fishers were joined by other local and national climate advocates, including Sunrise New Orleans, Permian Gulf Coast Coalition, Habitat Recovery Project, the Vessel Project, For a Better Bayou, the Louisiana Bucket Brigade, and actress and activist Jane Fonda.
"I thought I understood. I read the articles, I read the science, I've seen the photographs. But when you're here on the ground, seeing it with your own eyes and talking to the people... it feels like looking into the devil's eyes," Fonda said at the protest. "I've talked to people who have lost what was theirs over generations and are losing their livelihoods, the fishing, the oystering, the shrimping…"
Fonda called on the Biden administration to take action: "If President [Joe] Biden declared a climate emergency he could take money from the Pentagon and he could reinstate the crude oil export [ban]. Once the export ends, the drilling will end. They're only drilling because they can export it."
The successful action came despite interference from police, who threatened to issue tickets and tow away the six boats the fishers had originally parked in front of the convention center. Some participants agreed to move their boats, but the group was able to park two boats in front of the center and persevere in their protest.
"We're standing in the fire down there. And these people over here, the decisions that they make, for which our fishermen are paying the price. That's bullshit," Travis Dardar, who organized the fishers' trip and founded the group Fishermen Involved in Sustaining our Heritage (FISH), said in a statement."The police got us blocked here, they got us blocked there. But know that the fishermen are here and we're still going to try and give them hell."
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How We Found Out What's Done to the Oceans When Nobody Is Watching
We found that a remarkable amount of activity occurs outside of public monitoring systems. Our new map and data provide the most comprehensive public picture available of industrial uses of the ocean.
Jan 07, 2024
Humans are racing to harness the ocean’s vast potential to power global economic growth. Worldwide, ocean-based industries such as fishing, shipping and energy production generate at least US$1.5 trillion in economic activity each year and support 31 million jobs. This value has been increasing exponentially over the past 50 years and is expected to double by 2030.
Transparency in monitoring this “blue acceleration” is crucial to prevent environmental degradation, overexploitation of fisheries and marine resources, and lawless behavior such as illegal fishing and human trafficking. Open information also will make countries better able to manage vital ocean resources effectively. But the sheer size of the ocean has made tracking industrial activities at a broad scale impractical – until now.
A newly published study in the journal Nature combines satellite images, vessel GPS data and artificial intelligence to reveal human industrial activities across the ocean over a five-year period. Researchers at Global Fishing Watch, a nonprofit organization dedicated to advancing ocean governance through increased transparency of human activity at sea, led this study, in collaboration with me and our colleagues at Duke University, University of California, Santa Barbara and SkyTruth.
We found that a remarkable amount of activity occurs outside of public monitoring systems. Our new map and data provide the most comprehensive public picture available of industrial uses of the ocean.
Operating in the dark
Our research builds on existing technology to provide a much more complete picture than has been available until now.
For example, many vessels carry a device called an automatic identification system, or AIS, that automatically broadcasts the vessel’s identity, position, course and speed. These devices communicate with other AIS devices nearby to improve situational awareness and reduce the chances of vessel collisions at sea. They also transmit to shore-based transponders and satellites, which can be used to monitor vessel traffic and fishing activity.
However, AIS systems have blind spots. Not all vessels are required to use them, certain regions have poor AIS reception, and vessels engaged in illegal activities may disable AIS devices or tamper with location broadcasts. To avoid these problems, some governments require fishing vessels to use proprietary vessel monitoring systems, but the associated vessel location data is usually confidential.
Some offshore structures, such as oil platforms and wind turbines, also use AIS to guide service vessels, monitor nearby vessel traffic and improve navigational safety. However, location data for offshore structures are often incomplete, outdated or kept confidential for bureaucratic or commercial reasons.
Shining a light on activity at sea
We filled these gaps by using artificial intelligence models to identify fishing vessels, nonfishing vessels and fixed infrastructure in 2 million gigabytes of satellite-based radar images and optical images taken across the ocean between 2017 and 2021. We also matched these results to 53 billion AIS vessel position reports to determine which vessels were publicly trackable at the time of the image.
Remarkably, we found that about 75% of the fishing vessels we detected were missing from public AIS monitoring systems, with much of that activity taking place around Africa and South Asia. These previously invisible vessels radically changed our knowledge about the scale, scope and location of fishing activity.
For example, public AIS data wrongly suggests that Asia and Europe have comparable amounts of fishing within their borders. Our mapping reveals that Asia dominates: For every 10 fishing vessels we found on the water, seven were in Asia while only one was in Europe. Similarly, AIS data shows about 10 times more fishing on the European side of the Mediterranean compared with the African side – but our map shows that fishing activity is roughly equal across the two areas.
For other vessels, which are mostly transport- and energy-related, about 25% were missing from public AIS monitoring systems. Many missing vessels were in locations with poor AIS reception, so it is possible that they broadcast their locations but satellites did not pick up the transmission.
We also identified about 28,000 offshore structures – mostly oil platforms and wind turbines, but also piers, bridges, power lines, aquaculture farms and other human-made structures. Offshore oil infrastructure grew modestly over the five-year period, while the number of wind turbines more than doubled globally, with development mostly confined to northern Europe and China. We estimate that the number of wind turbines in the ocean likely surpassed the number of oil structures by the end of 2020.
Supporting real-world efforts
This data is freely available through the Global Fishing Watch data portal and will be maintained, updated and expanded over time there. We anticipate several areas where the information will be most useful for on-the-ground monitoring:
– Fishing in data-poor regions: Shipboard monitoring systems are too expensive to deploy widely in many places. Fishery managers in developing countries can use our data to monitor pressure on local stocks.
– Illegal, unreported and unregulated fishing: Industrial fishing vessels sometimes operate in places where they should not be, such as small-scale and traditional fishing grounds and marine protected areas. Our data can help enforcement agencies identify illegal activities and target patrol efforts.
– Sanction-busting trade: Our data can shed light on maritime activities that may breach international economic sanctions. For example, United Nations sanctions prohibit North Korea from exporting seafood products or selling its fishing rights to other countries. Previous work found more than 900 undisclosed fishing vessels of Chinese origin in the eastern waters of North Korea, in violation of U.N. sanctions.
We found that the western waters of North Korea had far more undisclosed fishing, likely also of foreign origin. This previously unmapped activity peaked each year in May, when China bans fishing in its own waters, and abruptly fell in 2020 when North Korea closed its borders because of the COVID-19 pandemic.
Better monitoring may help nations coordinate offshore activities in busy regions like the North Sea.– Climate change mitigation and adaptation: Our data can help quantify the scale of greenhouse gas emissions from vessel traffic and offshore energy development. This information is important for enforcing climate change mitigation programs, such as the European Union’s emissions trading scheme.
– Offshore energy impacts: Our map shows not only where offshore energy development is happening but also how vessel traffic interacts with wind turbines and oil and gas platforms. This information can shed light on the environmental footprint of building, maintaining and using these structures. It can also help to pinpoint sources of oil spills and other marine pollution.
Healthy oceans underpin human well-being in a myriad of ways. We expect that this research will support evidence-based decision-making and help to make ocean management more fair, effective and sustainable.
Fernando Paolo, senior machine learning engineer at Global Fishing Watch; David Kroodsma, director of research and innovation at Global Fishing Watch; and Patrick Halpin, Professor of Marine Geospatial Ecology at Duke University, contributed to this article.
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Armed With 'Advanced Killing Technology,' Humans Act as Planet's 'Super-Predators'
'Transformation requires imposing limits of humanity’s own design'
Aug 21, 2015
Humans are exceeding the bounds of natural systems and acting as "super-predators," a new report finds.
Researchers from the Raincoast Conservation Foundation at the University of Victoria (UVic) and the Hakai Institute analyzed over 300 studies comparing human hunter predation with that of non-humans. The analysis, published in the journal Science, found that while other predators are largely able to hunt at sustainable rates, humans, equipped with "advanced killing technology and fossil fuel subsidy," kill adult prey at a much higher—and unsustainable—rate.
"Our wickedly efficient killing technology, global economic systems, and resource management that prioritizes short-term benefits to humanity have given rise to the era of the human super predator," stated Dr. Chris Darimont, science director for Raincoast and Hakai-Raincoast professor at the UVic. "Our impacts are as extreme as our behavior as predators, and increasingly, humanity bears the burden of our predatory dominance."
The analysis shows that globally, humans and non-humans kill herbivores at roughly the same rate. A clear difference emerges for large carnivores, with humans killing them at a rate 9 times that of non-human predators.
The contrast is particularly stunning when looking at fish, with human predation 14 times that of non-humans.
Non-human predators generally target juveniles, while humans target adults, and that can have devastating impacts.
"In the overwhelming number of cases as fishes age, they become more fecund," Darimont explained. "That is to say, they produce more eggs, have more babies, and, in fact, in many cases, many of those babies are more likely to survive and reproduce themselves.
"So when a predator targets that reproductive age class and especially the larger, more fecund animals in those populations, we are dialing back the reproductive capacity of populations," he stated.
"The implications that can result," the authors write, "are now increasingly costly to humanity and add new urgency to reconsidering the concept of sustainable exploitation."
It's no small fix to bring about the changes needed, researchers note.
"Transformation requires imposing limits of humanity's design: cultural, economic, and institutional changes as pronounced and widespread as those that provided the advantages humans developed over prey and competitors."
The researchers write that one way to impose such limits and work towards sustainability is to make human predation rates more similar to those of non-humans.
Co-author Dr. Caroline Fox, a postdoctoral fellow at Raincoast and the UVic, adds that the needed shift requires "cultivating appreciation for terrestrial carnivores and new approaches to exploitation in the oceans."
The authors write that without a shift to such sustainable practices, humans "will continue to alter ecological and evolutionary processes globally."
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See more about the contrast in predation rates in the infographic below by the researchers:
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