Eve Frankel

Biodiversity: Nature by Another Name

May 15, 2024

Growing up as part of an immigrant family in Queens, NY, my childhood could be categorized as “nature deficient.” Aside from walks in the park or the special day trip to Jones Beach on a hot summer day, there was no camping, boating, or hiking. When we moved to the suburbs, a sign of upward mobility that my parents strived for, I truly thought we were in the great outdoors; our first backyard was a tangle of poison ivy, overgrown trees, and decorative exotics like Japanese cherry blossom. I had viewed nature as “nice to have” and could barely grasp its connection to me, let alone the vast spectrum of life it supports.

Fast forward thirty-five years later to my authoring this op-ed as the Vermont state director of The Nature Conservancy—an organization committed to conserving 30% of Vermont’s lands and waters by 2030 to fulfill its mission of protecting biodiversity. How do I connect these values to the average Vermonter and the average family trying to survive and thrive while navigating education, housing, health care and other issues? In a state like Vermont, known for its rural landscape, how critical is conserving nature?

Let’s begin with the term biodiversity and call it what it is: nature by another name.

Nature underpins every aspect of our lives: the food we eat, the air we breathe, a livable planet. The habitats that golden-winged warblers, black bears, and brook trout depend on are the very same habitats that make our lives possible—whether we live adjacent to these forests and rivers or downstream in an urban center. Seventy-five percent of global food crops rely on pollination. Forests filter and store forty percent of the world’s water for cities. When one of these systems or species begin to falter, it serves as a canary in the coal mine for our own species.

For the first time in over one-hundred years, Vermont forests are declining at an estimated rate of at least ten-thousand acres per year. Our freshwater health has been compromised due to generations of practices that have left our lakes compromised, our fish habitat degraded, and our communities more vulnerable to floods.

The effort to conserve thirty percent of our lands and waters is not an attempt to lock land away—it is a commonsense approach to ensuring that at a minimum, we are in balance with nature, so our human communities can grow safely and resiliently. Preserving biodiversity—the maples, ferns, fungi, pollinators, mussels, moose, hemlock, eagles—ensures that we and our families can continue to thrive as well.

Climate change is re-ordering our lives in dramatic ways and at a pace surprising even to those who have been studying climate for decades. Species are re-arranging themselves in response to these changes. Wildlife are adjusting their ranges thirty-three feet in elevation and eleven miles north each decade, alongside people who are also moving in response to our changing climate. Investing in nature not only supports biodiversity but also offers up to a third of the carbon reduction efforts scientists have deemed necessary, at a fraction of the cost of human-engineered solutions.

Vermont has done a commendable job of preserving our historic structures and villages, an agrarian landscape, and an outdoor recreational economy. Preserving biodiversity on the other hand, during a time of global biodiversity collapse, has not been met with the necessary and commensurate level of priority and funding. Yet, it is the web of life that our food systems, economies, and even medical research depend on.

Nature is not an extravagant amenity or simply a scenic backdrop for life’s activities. It is the foundation upon which all life depends.

Last year, The Nature Conservancy helped pass the state’s Community Resilience Act and Biodiversity Protection Act. Currently, there is a public process in place to determine how best to conserve thirty percent of Vermont by 2030. We at The Nature Conservancy, along with partners, are working diligently to ensure that biodiversity is appropriately prioritized so that we can co-create a future where both nature and people thrive.

Finding Hope in a Season of Darkness

November 16, 2023

My youngest son left for college this fall, leaving my husband and me empty nesters for the first time. As I eagerly await the return of my children for Thanksgiving, I am already preparing myself for the kitchen table conversations about how our climate crisis is shaping their lives in dramatic and unexpected ways.

My kids spent their high school years demanding climate action through youth marches. But as they have grown, so have climate impacts, along with my children’s anxiety about what the future has in store. The action they have demanded has come in fits and starts, often depending on fickle political winds, all while the headlines mount: fires, hurricanes, floods.

As a mother, it is hard to watch their precarious optimism for climate action falter. It forces me to focus on the opportunities rather than the challenges so that I can share with them stories of hope to combat their mounting sense of despair. Because when I look for them, signs of progress and hope are all around us.

First, climate change is no longer abstract. The wildfire smoke, life-threatening heat, destructive floods and subsequent spikes in insurance premiums is waking the average person up to the fact that climate change is indisputably here. I have witnessed Vermonters coming together this summer to confront the hard work of creating flood-safe communities with an urgency and practicality that is finally putting to rest the inaccurate narratives that disastrous flooding events only occur once a century, or that straightening and damming rivers can out-engineer nature. This recognition gives me hope.

Next, I believe that equity and justice are finally being prioritized. Climate impacts may be considered inconveniences for some, but the most vulnerable communities have long felt the consequences of our dependence on fossil fuels and their voices have historically been muted. While we have a long journey ahead in making equity and justice a central pillar of climate progress, the shift is happening among nonprofit organizations, government agencies and even on the funding landscape, as equity is at last being integrated into climate action efforts.. This new focus gives me hope.

Increasingly, climate policy is spurring economic development and progress. Since the Inflation Reduction Act was signed into law, more than 170,000 jobs have been created, and an additional 1.5 million jobs are expected to be added over the next decade. These investments are expected to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by approximately 1 billion tons in 2030. In Vermont, we recently passed the Biodiversity Protection and Community Resilience Act, creating a road map for how we conserve 30% of our lands and waters by 2030 and reaping the co-benefit of creating a more climate resilient state. Policy progress gives me hope.

We are finding effective climate solutions in nature. While we need to continue to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, we must also strive to remain nature positive. By doing so we can reduce up to a third of our global emissions by 2030. Efforts such as improved forest management, installing bioswales and rain gardens and wetland restoration can increase carbon storage while improving water quality and increasing flood resilience. Investing in nature is a cost-effective climate solution with myriad benefits. Nature gives me hope.

Most encouraging of all, youth are leading the change. The younger generation, whose future is overshadowed by climate change, are also the ones mobilizing in greatest numbers to alter our climate trajectory. Polling shows that young voters across party lines list climate as a top issue. The latest NPR/PBS NewsHour/Marist poll found nearly 60% of Americans ages 18 to 29 believe climate change should be a funding and policy priority. A larger group, 64%, believe climate change is a major threat, and 72% responded that climate change is affecting their local community. As climate issues continue to get elevated by the younger generation, bolder climate action is not far behind. The tenacity of youth gives me hope.

While not everyone has a front row seat to climate action, progress is being made. There has never been a more important time to support the work or join the movement. While we may not always agree on how we are going to reach our goals, there is room for a panoply of approaches if we can agree that by safeguarding our natural communities, we will save our human ones. And that inspires me with enough hope to work each day on behalf of people and our planet. 

My Unlikely Path to TNC in Vermont

October 23, 2023

As bare branches make Vermont’s familiar ridgelines appear again through the trees, it is hard not to appreciate the fresh perspective late autumn brings—a generous gift granted by the change of seasons. The Nature Conservancy in Vermont is experiencing its own change of seasons, as I take over the reins as state director from my predecessor, Heather Furman.

I had an unlikely and sinuous journey to this moment. I came to this country as a Polish immigrant when I was eight years old. English came to me in fits and starts, honed by my love of Sesame Street. I had little exposure to nature beyond our weekend trips to the Botanical Gardens Park in Queens, New York, which was within walking distance from our small apartment. At the time, the manicured gardens were more like horticulture exhibits to be admired, rather than green spaces to be explored. In the urban environment in which I was raised with many obstacles to accessing the outdoors, children don’t grow up learning to swim or identify trees and are not given the opportunity to explore meadows or streams, let alone to go camping under a starlit sky. 

Therefore, I am filled with wonder and appreciation for my own journey here to Vermont and ultimately for the opportunity to serve as this chapter’s state director—only its third state director in the chapter’s 63-year history. The path that brought me here is filled with both good luck and intention. Good luck: going on my first day hikes in Virginia’s Shenandoah Valley as a student at American University in Washington D.C. Intention: studying my first naturalist guides after I moved to Vermont in the 1990s to learn the names of the spring ephemeral flowers that breathed life into the world after a long winter’s sleep.

I often think about the bridges I had to cross to connect my experiences in the natural world with my desire for its protection. There were many. It is these experiences that motivate and inform an inclusive and equitable vision to help create a Vermont, and a planet, where both people and nature can thrive.

I have called the Mad River Valley home for 25 years. From this narrow valley nestled among the Green Mountains, I have witnessed both the wins for nature, such as nesting migratory birds and floodplain restoration, and the losses for nature, such as forest fragmentation and increased flood events driven by climate change. Against the global backdrop of our sharpening climate and biodiversity challenge, I know how important it is for our work to be felt directly within Vermont’s local communities while at the same time spreading our impact across state and international borders so that we can make the biggest strides possible to protect our lands and waters in a changing climate.

We depend on our nature’s safety net in ways that touch every aspect of our lives. The natural world we depend on depends on us to act in the face of these challenges. Therefore, in my first few months in this role, we will be taking an inventory of our work and investing more ambitiously in the areas where we can make the greatest impact. We will also be doubling down on our policy and outreach work to generate a groundswell of supporters to ensure that the benefits of a protecting nature in Vermont and across the planet are felt by all, while inspiring the largest cross section of people to advocate on behalf of a planet that needs our focus, our investment, and our voice.

I look forward to joining our committed supporters in conversations at events across the state as we advance a road map for solutions to our greatest challenges. Working together, we can connect people and nature to protect the health of our forests, rivers, wildlife, and communities.