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THE RACE TO SAVE WINTER

Tuesday, February 22, 2022

In today’s newsletter, we explore how to help wildlife this winter, what rising sea levels mean for you, how to restore forests … and the rise of ‘cryptic species.’

PHOTOGRAPHS BY CIRIL JAZBEC

By Robert Kunzig, Executive Editor, Environment

The Trift Bridge is a hanging, 560-foot-long pedestrian bridge suspended about 330 feet above a chasm in the Swiss Alps. Ciril Jazbec’s photo of hikers crossing that bridge in the March issue of National Geographic (pictured above) takes my breath away—and not just because I imagine the terror that an acrophobe like me would feel were I to brave that bridge myself.

The picture moves me because the hikers are silhouetted against a turquoise lake that I know didn’t exist before this century. And because a few decades ago, instead of hanging in mid-air, they could have crossed that canyon on a thick mass of solid ice called the Trift Glacier—which has now retreated a mile and a half up the mountain, leaving behind a lake and empty air. If you’re not a visual type and didn’t already know the concept of “negative space”—the idea that absence can be as eloquent as presence—well, it’s hard to imagine a more potent illustration than the picture by Jazbec, a Nat Geo Explorer.

The Alps are confronting a looming absence: Climate change is melting the snow and ice that are central to their culture and to an economy propped up by winter tourism. “To save themselves,” Denise Hruby writes in the story she reported with Jazbec, “the people of the Alps are going to dramatic lengths.” They are making snow with 100,000 machines (pictured above, scientists measure the ice thickness on the Pers Glacier in eastern Switzerland). They are covering great piles of it with blankets to keep it from melting over summer. They are even spreading blankets over glaciers (pictured below, sun-blocking plastic fabric drapes the tip of the Rhône Glacier in Switzerland) —and in one case, hatching an ingenious scheme to spread so much artificial snow on a glacier that it might grow again, or at least stop retreating.

No miracle will save winter in the Alps,” Hruby concludes. “All that will, at best, buy time in a few places.” Real hope lies in addressing the root causes of climate change—and in re-orienting the economy away from skiing. The Alps, after all, are magnificent year-round.

A Swiss power company wants to build a hydroelectric dam where the Trift Bridge is now, taking advantage of the glacier’s retreat to make a new source of green energy. The idea seems both wrong and eminently logical, in a making-lemonade-out-of-lemons kind of way: The lake behind the dam would also be a water reservoir for the summer, just as the glacier once was (above, geographer Damien Filip paddles on the Totensee, a small Swiss lake used for hydro power).

Whether or not that particular dam is a good idea, adapting to climate change is going to require a lot of that kind of thinking. In the Alps and mountain ranges around the world, it’s going to require finding something positive in the negative spaces left by vanished snow and ice.

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SMARTER PLANET

PHOTOGRAPH BY REBECCA HALE, NGM STAFF

Helping insects: The image above is of a human-built insect abode, one of four suggestions this spring to help wildlife in the March issue of National Geographic. “We need insects to pollinate plants, remove waste from ecosystems, and feed other animals; insects need safe places to rest and to lay their eggs,” Annie Roth writes.

SUBSCRIBER EXCLUSIVE

MORE WAYS TO HELP

In her article, Roth also suggests:
— Installing bird-safe windows
— Keeping a distant eye on just-born animals if their moms are gathering food
— Checking the yard for animals before firing up the lawn mower

TAKE SIX

A stunning Scottish pterosaur is the biggest fossil of its kind (Nat Geo)

What the rise in sea level means for you (Nat Geo)

Students from 5 universities sue to compel fossil-fuel divestment (The Guardian)

The tangled history that unites—and divides—Ukraine and Russia (Nat Geo)

Brussels and Paris move to limit cars in city centers (Cycling Weekly)

Ikea’s race for the last of Europe’s old-growth forests (The New Republic)

ONE MOMENT

PHOTOGRAPH BY PRAKASH SINGH, AFP/GETTY IMAGES

Pinning it on pines: We’ve written how a switch to fast-growing pines (with their highly flammable needles) has made the vast forests of Patagonia more susceptible to fire. The same thing is happening in northern India’s Himalaya region, which saw old-growth oaks chopped down in the colonial era and replaced with pines. A move is afoot to replace some of those pines with oak seedlings to reverse the damage, Nat Geo reports.

FAST FORWARD

PHOTOGRAPH BY DOUG WECHSLER, NATURE PICTURE LIBRARY

Getting to know the neighbors: Each year, scientists describe thousands of new species on Earth—and some of them have been right under our noses. That type of species, like a new kind of octopus or electric eel announced last year, is known as “cryptic,” Zach St. George writes for Nat Geo. “People had seen the creature before. They just hadn’t realized that the creature was its own species.” (Until 2014, Staten Island’s leopard frogs were classified as southern leopard frogs (pictured above), but research showed they were a “new” and distinct species.)

Subscriber exclusive: How electric eels zap their prey

We hope you liked today’s Planet Possible newsletter. This was edited and curated by Monica Williams, Heather Kim, and David Beard. Have an idea or a link for us? Write [email protected]. Have a good week ahead!

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