Thread by @reveal

1/ The plight of rare sea turtles shows how national parks need cutting-edge science to protect rare animals and plants at risk from climate change-induced flooding.

Reporter @ShogrenE explains in this week's episode: revealnews.org/episodes/silen…

2/ @NatlParkService hired @Dr_Caffrey to calculate future flooding at 118 parks from sea level rise and storm surge.

But her research got suppressed, so it's been unavailable to most scientists. revealnews.org/article/wipeou…

3/ Here's why it's urgently important for scientists to have this data: Sea turtles and other rare animals face grave dangers as seas rise and hurricanes intensify with climate change.

4/ For example, in 2017, Hurricane Irma destroyed 6,324 turtle nests Canaveral National Seashore.

That's about half of the nests laid along its 24-mile coast.

5/ Each nest holds about 100 eggs. That’s hundreds of thousands of baby turtles that didn’t get a chance to hatch.

That’s the damage from just ONE storm, along ONE stretch of coast.

6/ Climate change didn't cause Irma, but it made the hurricane fiercer, according to 2018’s National Climate Assessment. nca2018.globalchange.gov/chapter/2/

7/ Scientist Betsy Von Holle got early access to @Dr_Caffrey's data and said it's been "super important" to her study of the danger sea turtles face from erosion and storms at national parks.

8/ Von Holle focuses on Cape Canaveral, Cape Lookout, Cumberland Island and Hatteras National Seashores. Green and loggerhead sea turtles, both classified as threatened under the Endangered Species Act, nest there.

9/ Von Holle scheduled an interview with @ShogrenE, then cancelled it, after the Park Service told her it would not be "prudent."

10/ Shutting down that interview is one example of a broad pattern of suppression of the communication of climate change science under Trump at Interior.

Here’s another: revealnews.org/article/nation…

11/ Von Holle’s research isn’t supposed to exist in the shadows. Her proposal emphasized the public’s great interest in sea turtles.

12/ And her work, which is designed to be displayed on each park’s website, maps today’s nesting sites and shows how they are projected to erode in the future.

13/ But given the Trump administration’s resistance to providing info to the public on climate change, will these maps ever materialize?

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