Opinion Piece in Columbus Dispatch: “Bill aims to strip away water safeguards and hang Ohioans out to dry”

Check out Dr. Sullivan’s Op-Ed in the Columbus Dispatch from earlier this month on proposed regulation to deregulate and remove protection from ephemeral streams and wetlands in Ohio!

https://www.dispatch.com/story/opinion/columns/guest/2021/05/14/s-mazeika-p-sullivan-bill-aims-strip-away-water-safeguard-and-hang-ohioans-out-dry/5073240001/

Ohio ephmeral wetland that could lose protection.

New Research Links Aerial Insectivorous Bird Conservation with Climate, Cities, and Water Quality

Bird populations across North American have declined over the past 50 years, with a cumulative loss of billions of breeding birds across species and habitat types.  Aerial insectivorous birds – for example, swallows, swifts, flycatchers, and nightjars – have experienced particularly alarming population declines. In a new paper published Ecological Monographs, Dr. Sullivan and colleagues report their findings from a five-year study in Columbus, Ohio. This work looks at how climate, urbanization, and water quality interact to affect Tree Swallow reproductive success and condition. Tree Swallows were used as model aerial insectivorous bird.

Read more about the findings in the original, open-access paper, or in the OSUNews or The Wildlife Society stories on the research.  

ORW Director Dr. Mažeika Sullivan leads policy paper in Science Magazine decrying rollbacks on federal protections of US waters.

Dr. Sullivan recently led a policy piece in the Science Magazine tackling a pressing environmental issue: water protection. He and his co-authors examine the science and the law behind the recently finalized Navigable Waters Protection Rule, which removes protections for millions of miles of streams and acres of wetlands in the US. These streams and wetlands are vital ecosystems that both directly and indirectly provide a range of ecosystem services, including providing drinking water, reducing floods, and generating billions of dollars to the US economy. This new rule is based on questionable legal choices and is highly inconsistent with the best available science on water and watersheds, and in particular on how connections between waters are critical for their function. The result: a major rollback in environmental protections that has the potential to cause widespread and long-lasting harm to US waters.

For access to the full article, please see the Dr. Sullivan’s Publications page.

See below for some of the media coverage on this:

A watershed moment for U.S. water quality

New Rule Threatens Environment, Puts U.S. Waters at Risk