Short Wave - How Climate Change Is Testing The Endangered Species Act

Episode Date: October 25, 2023

Some people keep dogs in their backyards. In the Florida Keys, some residents have deer the size of a golden retriever in their yards. As sea levels rise and salt water climbs higher on the islands, it's shrinking habitat for this deer — which already has an estimated population of at most 1,000. Today, host Regina G. Barber hears from reporters Nate Rott and Ryan Kellman about the Key deer, and how rising sea levels are forcing wildlife managers to ask big questions about the future of the subspecies. In this episode, we incorrectly stated that Valerie Preziosi is the founder of Key Deer Alliance. In fact, she is the founder and director of the organization Save Our Key Deer.See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for sponsorship and to manage your podcast sponsorship preferences.NPR Privacy Policy

You're listening to Shortwave from NPR. Hey there, shortwavers, Regina Barber here. And today we're going to talk about what I've been told is an incredibly cute deer. It is stupid cute, Regina. That's the only way to describe it. So imagine Bambi, but even the adults look like Bambi. When they're grown up, they're only about the size of a golden retriever. Okay, Nate Rot, Ryan Kelman, I get it, they're cute.

Can we meet them already? Oh, much obliged. Maybe the one thing before we leave. Yeah. Could you introduce us to some of your deer? Sure. So this skeptical woman you're hearing Nate talking to is Valerie Preziosi. Introduce you.

So we got there, you're like, got to come eat our deer. I was like, I don't need to shake hooves, you know. And the reason she's having to put up with our terrible jokes, well, let's be honest, Nate's terrible jokes, is because she's a huge advocate for this tiny deer that we're talking. about the key deer? The key deer? I've never heard of that before. Well, that's not a surprise because they only exist on the low-lying Florida Keys. So the smallest deer species in North America, they are federally endangered with an estimated population of around 1,000. All right, so here's deer.

Just a few of them. Hey, guys. There's like eight of them in her yard. A lot of them are really used to humans, so you see them all over the place behind the grocery store, crossing the road, near the bank, everywhere. So this first little one here, she still has a little bit of dots. I've seen her still taking a few quick sips from her mother. And the reason we met with Valerie Preziosi, the founder and director of the nonprofit Save Our Key Deer and other people on the Keys, is because this tiny, cute species is raising one of the biggest questions in wildlife conservation today.

Yeah, and the question is, what do we do with a species that's habitat? The only place it lives is disappearing. Today on the show, the story of a tiny deer. And rising seas, we look at how climate change is raising difficult questions for the world's threatened and endangered species. I'm Nate Rot. I'm Ryan Kelman. And I'm Regina Barber. You're listening to Shortwave from NPR.

Okay, let me start with you, Ryan. You asked what we as humans are supposed to do with species that's habitat is disappearing, like the key deer. Right. So the key deer lives on these islands off the South Florida coast that are. super low-lying. Like the highest natural elevation on Big Pine Key, where most of the deer now live, only reaches about eight feet above sea level. And sea levels are rising. Bingo. I mean, yeah, sea level rise is actually how the key deer were created. So regular-sized white-tailed deer grazed down Florida in the last ice age and then got stranded on the keys when the ice melted

in sea levels rose. And the keys became keys, right? Small islands. And the deer shrunk? Yeah, exactly. As the habitat changed, got smaller, the deer adapted, and they evolved to be smaller. But they were able to do that because we're talking about this whole process happening over tens of thousands of years. The sea level rise was slow. Imperceptible from a human being's perspective. This is Chris Berg with the Nature Conservancy in the Florida Keys. Very easy for nature and all the species to adapt to that. But then over the last century, as a result of the Industrial Revolution and burning of fossil fuels and the greenhouse.

effect, warming up the atmosphere, warming up the ocean. We went from that very slow to now over the last century, about 10 inches. Wow, 10 inches of sea level rise. That's right, yeah. And I imagine that's only speeding up the more of the world warms. Yep, hence the problem for the key deer. And for the 80,000 some people like Berg who live on the Florida Keys, we went to a couple of places around Big Pine Key with Chris Burke. Yeah, we saw an alligator and other Florida type things. There's the gator. Hey, big fella. And the gator. And the gaiter. And the goal was to see how changes on the keys are already occurring. So the first spot we went was this big open expanse, just a couple of blocks from Berg's house, between a neighborhood and the ocean. You can't see the open ocean here, but just beyond the vegetation. And by vegetation, do you mean

like trees or mangroves? Well, so that's what's interesting. So we were standing in this kind of dead zone, right? The vegetation he was pointing at by the ocean was mostly mangroves, which, as you know, for the most part, can tolerate saltwater. Behind us, higher. up were these tall spread-out pine trees. They're called Pine Rockland, which is the main habitat for key deer, and Pine Rockland is not as tolerant of saltwater. But between the two where we were standing, there's this sort of transition zone. As we look out here, you see dead pine trees, and those tall, dead gray stumps or snags, they show you where the pine forest used to be, and that's receded by, you know, hundreds of meters at this point. So as the saltwater

climbs higher on these islands. It's like shrinking the habitat for these pine trees and the key deer. Yeah, it's making Pine Rockland a shrinking island on a shrinking island. Which is raising these major ethical and logistical questions for the wildlife managers tasked with keeping endangered species like the key deer alive. You know, if you move key deer to the mainland, they'll interbreed with the regular deer. And then if it's only a matter of generations before you don't have key deer anymore, if you move key deer to, the Bahamas where there are no native land animals, the key deer will eat every plant, you know. Cause all kinds of, they'll become an invasive species. If you move key deer to a whole series of

zoos like, you know, people have done with pandas and, you know, you name it, endangered species. You can do that and you can keep them going, but at what cost and to what end, you know, is that really a future for the species, the subspecies? Yeah. I mean, despite the positive role zoos can play in conservation, they can also be a tough reminder of how bad things have gotten for a whole lot of species. Yeah, and with the deer, it becomes a question of like, who are we actually doing that for? Are we putting them in zoos for the sake of the dears? Or are we putting them in zoos for the sake of our own consciences? Okay, so what are they going to do? That, Regina, is a good question. And it's one that we put to some of the folks managing habitat and species on the Florida Keys with

the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Agency, Nikki Calangelo and Christian Eggleston, on a very windy boat off of Big Pine Key. It just seems like the conversation is such a new and unique space to be in for any of us, but definitely like at any government agency, basically those systems are built on like we have data. We know that if you make the speed limit of 65, that we're going to have X many less traffic incidents and less deaths

or whatever. But with this, it's like the data doesn't have a solution. It's like no analog future. It's our values. It's what do we want to do. Right. And then that becomes a much harder thing because it's so many different people out there. You know, like, I don't know.

You know? Yeah, right. Yeah. It's not. I struggle with that too. I mean, because the options range from giving up and letting a species go extinct to doing absolutely everything you can and putting animals in zoos or, you know, collecting plants and putting them in botanical gardens. And I mean, I don't want any species to go extinct on my

watch, you know, I don't think any of us to. I mean, but is society, where's society on that, you know? So what does she mean by that? Like, where is society on letting species go extinct? Yeah, I mean, because the scale of the threat that climate change is posing, to, you know, thousands of species, but especially endemic species, right? Plants and animals like the key deer that live in only one place. The threat is so acute that the options, as you heard, aren't really that great. Yeah, and the thing is, you know, keeping species alive can cost lots of money. And that requires a lot of political will. Species need places to live, so to humans, and in places like the Keys where land is scarce, that can lead to conference.

So what do you think is going to happen to the key deer? Yeah, I honestly don't know. Yeah, same. But, you know, that's a question we asked pretty much everybody while we were there, including a biologist who spent most of his career studying these deer before retiring from the University of Texas A&M. His name is Nova Sylvie. We'll lose them all of that way. We've lost a lot of species.

Otherwise, we're out here fighting dinosaurs. So we're going to lose them sometime. We're going to lose us sometime, too. So, you know, Sylvie doesn't think this is like imminent. They'll continue to exist as long as they have the habitat. And that's a hard thing to know because sea level rise projections vary so much as you go further and further into the future. Yeah, and I suppose it's possible they do get moved to a zoo or wildlife managers figure out some other solution. I mean, yeah, it's possible that we take the steps necessary to stop warming the planet as a collective society or that we find some way to suck carbon from the atmosphere and slow sea.

level rise altogether. But, you know, regardless, Sylvie and other people we've talked to think we need to be having this discussion about what to do with the key deer and other climate-threatened species right now. Because in the future, you're going to worry about deer when you got worry about people. That's my concern. Yeah. Yeah, at a certain point, the wildlife don't matter. The wildlife don't matter. You're going to be worried about people. Wow, that's a bit grim. Yeah, it's unfortunately super grim. Sorry, Regina. Yeah, however, I will say, though the situation may be desperate, I didn't hear a lot of despair from the folks down there in the keys. I think the people who are familiar with the situation understand the influence humans have had over creating that situation.

And I think what they're saying is that we really need to get together and decide how we want to exert that influence next. Ryan, Nate, thank you so much for this reporting. It's a lot to think about. Yeah, thank you, Regina. Yeah, thank you. This episode was produced by Rachel Carlson. It was edited by Sadie Babbitts and managing producer Rebecca Ramirez. Nate checked the facts.

And the audio engineer was Robert Rodriguez. Beth Donovan is our senior director of programming and Anya Grunman is our senior vice president of programming. I'm Regina Barber. Thank you for listening to Shorewave from NPR.