This amazing shot by Flickr user “Soggydan” Dan Bennett of a leaping coho salmon in Issaquah Creek, Washington state was taken with a 60mm lens — which basically means the photographer could have reached out and touched this fish. Like we said — amazing! Thanks for sharing it through The Nature Conservancy’s Flickr Group, Soggydan!

Check out all The Nature Conservancy’s featured daily nature images, submitted to the Conservancy’s Flickr group by people like you — at my.nature.org. And why not give the gift of clean water this holiday season to keep salmon spawning?

1. We’re getting closer to regulating U.S. greenhouse gas emissions — yesterday the EPA took one more step through the obstacle course of government process, inspiring much optimism.
2. Is it too late to save the vaquita porpoise from extinction? Scientists are hoping not. Only 150 remain, threatened by fishing practices, but there’s new hope: the Mexican government has passed a resolution to ban trawling in the vaquita’s only habitat, in the Gulf of California. 
3. Melting glaciers often seem purely symbolic of the climate change problem, but they have real consequences: a new report says the melting of India’s Kashmir glaciers will threaten the water supply of millions of people in the Himalayas, where 90 percent of glaciers are receding.
4. The situation for the koala is nowhere near as dire as the vaquita dolphin, but cute and cuddly can get you a lot of publicity. New estimates indicate Australia’s koala population is getting smaller due to habitat loss, prompting an all-out media campaign by the Australia Koala Foundation.
5. Botanists are in a debate over whether assisted migration of plants — helping them relocate in the face of climate change — is a wise endeavor. Opponents worry that the science isn’t accurate enough to predict if a plant species will become invasive once moved. 

1. Now here’s a question that’s been keeping millions up at night! Which is greener: Going into the refrigerator for a bottle of cold water or using the water dispenser on the fridge door? (Do those still exist?) Treehugger’s Ask Pablo says…um, why are you refrigerating your water?
2. What’s a ton of emitted carbon actually worth? The Institute for Policy Integrity consulted 144 leading economists and got…wildly disparate estimates from the pointyheads. (But 98% of them favored putting a price on the stuff to incentivize energy efficiency and innovation. Hat tip: CleanTechnica.)
3. How can you change a climate change denier’s mind? “The Psychology of Climate Change Communication,” a new report from Columbia University researchers, gives tips for advocates — don’t pile on the anxiety, and be honest about uncertainties. (The report also says people wonder why we can’t just reopen the ozone hole to release the build-up of greenhouse gases. Hat tip: Bright Green Blog.)
4. How many species have been listed as endangered by the Obama administration? Would you believe just one? That’s a much slower rate than that under President George W. Bush, reports Jeremy Hance at Mongabay.
5. 31 days to Copenhagen…what will happen? Today, the BBC’s Richard Black takes his best guess…and says get ready for some late night pizza deliveries and last-second deals. (There is good pizza in Copenhagen, isn’t there?)

1. Seems fishy, but overall U.S. water consumption has declined in the past 25 years — despite a growing population and increasing water use. Huh? Tina Casey at CleanTechnica says it’s because of more efficient ag irrigation systems and better cooling schemes for power plants (which still amount to 50% of U.S. water use).
2. Barcelona climate talks update: Jeff Tollefson at Climate Feedback says the E.U. might accept a political agreement on climate at Copenhagen rather than a binding legal treaty. (Trust me: You need to know what that means.) Grist reports that European climate negotiators say success at Copenhagen is up to President Obama.
3. In case you missed it, a U.S. Senate committee passed a climate bill yesterday, with all Republican committee members boycotting the vote.  The Vine yawns, saying the real action on the bill will be separate negotiations between Senators Kerry, Lieberman and Graham.
4. Where could coastal wetlands go when sea level rises? Um…nowhere, says a new report in Environmental Research Letters — more than 50% of the land along the U.S. Atlantic coast that could have been used for inland wetlands migration is developed or soon will be. (Hat tip: Journal Watch Online.)
5. Speaking of on the move, half of 36 Atlantic Ocean fish stocks have moved north as ocean temps have warmed, says a new study by NOAA researchers. Some species have left U.S. waters altogether! Just wait until Glenn Beck gets wind of these treasonous climate-change dodgers!! (Hat tip: Yale Environment 360.)

It’s Election Day in the United States — get out and vote! Then immediately get back on your smartphone and check out the hottest in online green this morning — including what might possibly be the best green name ever…

1. Mt. Kilimanjaro’s ice cap is disappearing — but is that climate change’s fault? Two research teams are disagreeing, reports The New York Times, with one blaming a decline in moisture rather than rising temperatures. (No word on which side of this debate the band Toto — which had the 1982 smash hit song “Africa,” which in an eerie coincidence mentions both Kilimanjaro and “the rains of Africa” — comes down. We’ll keep you posted.)
2. Meanwhile, Nepal’s cabinet plans to meet on Mount Everest to show the world how global warming is melting Himalayan glaciers, reports Associated Press. (No need for oxygen tanks — they’re only going to base camp, not all the way up.)
3. The leader of Orthodox Christianity — Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew, who calls himself “the green patriarch” — is in Washington this week, talking up the spiritual importance of environmentalism, reports the Washington Post.
4. Speaking of the Post, check out their great infographic tool that tracks total national per capita CO2 emissions since 1950. (Hat tip: Treehugger.)
5. Which societies will survive climate change best? Gaia Vince (which has to be one of the great green names in history) surveys the field at Yale Environment 360 and likes…Laos, among other places.

(Image: Mount Kilimanjaro. Credit: Picture_Taker_2/Flickr through a Creative Commons license.)

What’s more frightening than more Americans getting their news from Jon Stewart than a newspaper? When Jon Stewart says putting giant reflective mirrors into space will slow climate change…and he means it! It’s real scary stuff, kids, so we put it last in this morning’s Coolness to give you a good fright for the weekend! (Like you needed one.)

1. Wind turbines get bad press for killing migrating birds, bats…anything that flies. But a new study reported in CleanTechnica says cats and buildings kill far more…and that climate change poses the biggest threat of extinction to bird species. (Those darn outdoor cats…)
2. Were expectations too high for Copenhagen to begin with? A new study in Nature Reports Climate Change says researchers who study cooperation think “trying to get an effective multi-faceted treaty agreed between 192 nations is a waste of time,” reports Climate Feedback. Ouch! (But bilateral deals are a much more effective first step, says the report…and it seems U.S. climate envoy Todd Stern might now agree, reports The Guardian.)
3. Could reducing air pollution speed up global warming? A new report in Science magazine says some aerosols actually have an atmospheric cooling effect…perhaps akin to a giant antiperspirant. (Hat tip: Journal Watch Online.)
4. Nothing is ever easy, is it? Solar farms, it turns out, demand a lot of water for cooling — pitting them smack against water conservation in the perpetually H2O-challenged state of California, says EcoGeek.
5. Jon Stewart endorses geoengineering (you know, like placing reflective mirrors in Earth orbit or seeding clouds) as the most viable solution to climate change, prompted by the arguments of Freakonomics authors Steven Levitt and Steven Dubner. Problem is, Levitt and Dubner are wrong, say a growing number of people. Treehugger reviews the debate.

(Image credit: jpstanley/Flickr through a Creative Commons license.)

1. New data suggest that wetlands could store six times more carbon per acre than forests, leading some scientists and companies to consider wetlands restoration as the next shining hope for carbon offsets.
2. How much does it cost to save an endangered species? A lot. A new report from the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service says the United States spent $1.5 billion on efforts to protect endangered species in 2007. The most expensive species that year? Chinook salmon.
3. Marijuana growers in California get blamed for a lot of nefarious activities, and a new one has just been added to the list: worsening the state’s drought. Officials in Mendocino County say illicit pot growers have a huge impact on water resources.
4. Do you ever use your phonebook? Has the thought crossed your mind that phonebooks are a colossal waste of paper? A new campaign is trying to put a stop to the waste by making phone books optional.
5. Using an infrared camera, Terry Gosney spots gas leaks that can’t be seen with the naked eye – thereby helping companies save energy and money and reduce climate change impacts.

Boys fishing the Zambezi River behind a crocodile barrier

How do you convince people that a river they’ve known their whole lives is not the river it once was…or could be?

That turned out to be my challenge last week, when I traveled to Zambia in support of The Nature Conservancy’s new project to restore the Zambezi River.  After several days of meetings with our partners — including WWF and universities and government agencies from Zambia, Zimbabwe and Mozambique — I finally got to spend some time on the river itself, in Lower Zambezi National Park.

This was my first experience in an African wilderness, and I was awestruck by the sheer abundance of hippos and crocs and the throngs of elephants, buffalo, antelope and baboons brought to the river’s edge by the blazing heat and parched hills that marked the end of Zambia’s long dry season (see below for a slideshow of the river, dam and wildlife).

While the wildlife had left me with a childlike sense of wonder, it was our dinner companion that night that brought home for me the importance and challenge of this project.

We sat down to dinner amidst a throbbing insect soundtrack, a slow-burning fire glowing in the foreground with the Zambezi a sinuous darker void in the darkness beyond. Joining us was Kevin, a Zambian who manages the lodge where we were staying.  Conversation turned to the health of the river and he told us the majority of his guests were anglers lured by the aptly named tiger fish, a fearsome predator with teeth right off the costume rack of a B-horror movie.

Kevin mentioned that fish numbers were down and had been going down for a while. This seemed a natural opening to talk about one of the specific objectives of our Zambezi project: working with dam managers to improve how they release water from the massive upstream Kariba Dam (called “environmental flow releases”), in part to promote the productivity of fish in this part of the river.

My Conservancy colleague suggested this: “You know,” he said, “some people think the fish decline is because the river no longer has high water during the rainy season because how the dam is operated.”

Kevin, nothing if not blunt, shook his head and said: “Nah, that’s crap. The real reason is that people in the villages take too many fish — they use nets with a small mesh that catch everything in the river, even the smallest fish. That’s why the fish numbers are going down.  But what can you do? You can’t simply tell people not to fish, they have nothing else. What will they do then, come and rob you at night?” He went on to relate his skepticism that the operation of Kariba Dam should, or even could, be altered; it just seemed risky to him.

In this one riposte, Kevin succinctly framed both the need and challenges for the Zambezi project.

First, although the river appears healthy — its water is clean and its banks are wild and rich in wildlife — appearances can be deceiving.  The river is not healthy, or at least not the same healthy it once was. Kariba Dam — big enough to store every drop of water flowing in the river for two years — has tamed it, made it a different river. Before the dam, the river ran high during the rainy season and very low in the dry. Today, the big reservoir behind Kariba captures the floods and evens out the flows throughout the year

Though we don’t have fisheries data from before Kariba, if the Zambezi is like most other big rivers, much of its fish abundance would have been produced in the floodplain grasslands and wetlands when they were inundated by high flows. Now the Zambezi mostly stays in its banks.

Second, the challenges for conservation and of people are intertwined. Overfishing is hurting the Zambezi and, ultimately, the people that depend upon it. The people who live here need some combination of better fisheries management, alternative sources of income and protein, and more fish in the river (one of the goals of the environmental-flows project). These livelihood challenges are inextricably linked with nature conservation and restoration.

Finally, even potential beneficiaries of changes can be skeptical of deviations from the status quo, because the risk of disruption looms larger than the as-yet-unproven possibility of benefits. Thus, the benefits must be clearly analyzed, demonstrated, and communicated.

Kevin’s conviction that overfishing, not flow regime, is the cause of fish decline is partly right — it is a problem for the river as it is today, this river. But this river is different from the river it once was. It’s not surprising that Kevin doesn’t suspect the flow regime; the current river is the only river he’s ever known.  Kariba was built in 1955, and so the only people who can really remember how the river previously worked — let’s say those at least 12 years old then — are nearly 70 years old today.  For everyone else, this river is the river.  And this Zambezi is being overfished.  But perhaps some aspects of the old Zambezi can be restored.

It’s clear we need good communications tools.  If Kevin — who has much to gain from a new flow regime — was skeptical of changes to the river’s management, what would other people say?

Fortunately, we got some practice at that communication later in the conversation. Kevin mentioned that the anglers know they need to fish near the river’s edges, where it flows next to or through downed logs, grasses and other vegetation. “Not out in the middle of the river,” he said. “The water’s too fast and the fish don’t like it. The fish are along the edges.”

I explained that what we talked about before — environmental flows to restore the connection between river and floodplain — was really the same thing as creating lots and lots of such “edge” habitat. Rather than just being restricted to the sides of the river, the shallow, calm, and vegetated “edge” habitat would cover an extensive plain — the difference between grazing cows in a strip of grass along a highway versus a vast meadow.

Kevin nodded his head thoughtfully.  I don’t know if he was convinced, but we’d found some common understanding and vocabulary of how the river worked.  We have much work ahead of us.

(Photo credit: Jeff Opperman/TNC.)

1. Big snakes are becoming a big problem, says the United States Geological Survey.  The group just issued a report concluding that, should the Burmese python and other species of giant constricting snakes continue to make themselves cozy in the U.S., they could completely destabilize ecosystems and wipe out vulnerable native species.  (Hat tip:  dotEarth.)
2. The University of Maryland at College Park and Rio Salado College in Tempe, Arizona will share the title of “America’s Greenest Campus,” reports Green Inc.   In addition to bragging rights, each school gets $5,000 toward new green initiatives.
3. The state of California has legalized “gray water” systems, allowing residents to water their lawns with the runoff from showers, sinks, dishwashers and laundry machines, reports The Vine.  Technically, it’s a huge victory for water conservation, but it turns out a lot of people were already doing it anyway.
4. Does buying green products make you a bad person? According to GreenBiz, a recent report found that people feel better about justifying white lies and other minor infractions after purchasing “green” items– kind of like canceling out a bad behavior with a good one.
5. Keep your chins up, mates!  A new study found that Aussies are losing their enthusiasm for the fight against climate change, and it scarily reflects the current situation in the U.S., says Environmental Capital.

There is a growing demand from science, from policy and from conservation itself to include people in conservation.

In the meantime, conservationists are still trying to figure out how to best conserve habitats and species and now how to do this with climate change. Now we’re piling on people, too?

But I would argue that thinking people — both how nature serves people but also how to invest in people to better serve nature — can make everything simpler for conservation. At the end of the day, nature and people have the same economic bottom line: survival.  So why can’t we speak in one currency?

We need that universal currency, and not necessarily in the form of a price tag for the services that nature provides — like clean water and clean air.

We need to rethink the way we talk about “value” in all senses: economic, environmental or otherwise.  As historian Eric Zency articulated in a recent New York Times opinion piece:

…this [economic] downturn offers an excellent opportunity to get rid of…gross domestic product [G.D.P.]…a deeply foolish indicator of how the economy is doing.

Zency describes multiple things wrong with the indicator, but the most salient for conservation being that generally G.D.P doesn’t reflect real and complete costs and benefits. Burn fossil fuels by using electricity to dry your clothes and up goes G.D.P. But if you air dry them, conserve our natural capital (i.e. our air), and ultimately enhance our planet’s sustainability…there is no change in G.D.P.

Conservation scientists can help with this problem perhaps not by actually getting rid of G.D.P., but rather by providing the food to fuel the integration of nature’s value in this index.  The problem is: We don’t. Instead, as Thomas Friedman discusses in a recent Times column:

We’re trying to deal with a whole array of integrated problems…separately.  The poverty fighters resent the climate-change folks; climate folks hold summits without reference to biodiversity; the food advocates resist the biodiversity protectors.

So, how to value what ecosystems do for us in a way that’s objective, not subjective? I don’t think this value needs to be a marketable dollar value, at least not right away. The first step is to work backwards: Figure out the origins of what people value about nature.

For instance: Water “comes” from a tap. But really, it might come from an aquifer partially fed by surface water streams that come from the snow pack on a mountain range hundreds of miles away. Melt the snow pack or degrade the mountain vegetation so the soils no longer soak the water into the aquifer and suddenly we have no water in our taps — whether we are poor or rich.

So there is value in that snow pack and in that vegetation and in those soils. Admittedly, no one knows exactly how much value and what it’s “worth.” But I don’t think we need an exact measure to integrate the value into our economic accounting systems.

The Nature Conservancy’s water fund projects in Quito and elsewhere in Latin America are a good example of approximating such value. Water utilities need clean water for their clients (often urban residents). Hydropower companies need water free of sediments to generate power. So instead of paying for water treatment plants and for dredging equipment, why not invest that money in the protection and restoration of the watershed where the water comes from? Invest it in people and in nature.

These projects do just that — and in so doing, a market is created and a non-subjective value attached. Water funds make it one conversation. It’s not simple, but it’s possible. And the sooner people, banks, poverty, climate, animals, water, fish, birds, cities, fungi and bats all enter the same picture, the sooner we can find more solutions to a set of problems that are inextricably linked.

(Image: Maria Aigaje (on right) with her daughter Adelaida (center) and son, Saul prepare beans at their home in the traditional Quechua community of Oyacachi, which lies within Ecuador’s Condor Bioreserve. The community of Oyacachi has benefited from funds generated by a sustainable water fund in Quito. Adelaida has organized a youth group to do reforestation work. “They’re helping to replant 7,000 polylepis trees. They’re teaching all of us how to care for nature,” stated her mother. Credit: Bridget Besaw.)