(05/31/2007) Since its earliest days, when private collectors amassed great stores of specimens collected from the farthest reaches of the Earth, natural history studies often have been a pursuit of the economically well-off and of intellectually elitist scientists. One of the most important spinoffs of these natural history studies has been Conservation Biology. Unfortunately, the culture of exclusivity appears to have also infected Conservation Biology. Technical jargon, restricted access to data, and poor communication among researchers, amateur enthusiasts and political decision-makers have colluded to keep it a clubby affair that may be hurting goals of sustainable use of resources, long term management policies, and species and habitat conservation.
[
Conservation]
(05/23/2007) Big cats are some of Earth's largest and most threatened predators. Long persecuted as perceived threats to livestock and humans, hunted for their skins and purported medicinal values, and losing critical habitat to deforestation and conversion for agriculture, big cat populations have dwindled around the world for the past century. Given these trends, it should come as no surprise that big cats have become the focus of conservation efforts. Not only are large predators often the most vulnerable to human pressures and the first to disappear from ecosystems, but efforts to conserve them effectively help protect thousands of other species that share their habitat. At the forefront of these efforts in Dr. Luke Hunter, a biologist with the Wildlife Conservation Society (WCS) where he heads their Great Cats Program. In a May 2007 interview with mongabay.com, Hunter discussed strategies for conserving carnivores and offered insight for students interested in pursuing careers in conservation science.
[
Carbon Finance | Rainforests | Global Warming Mitigation]
(05/17/2007) Ethanol production in the United States may be contributing to deforestation in the Brazilian rainforest said a leading expert on the Amazon. Dr. Daniel Nepstad of the Woods Hole Research Center said the growing demand for corn ethanol means that more corn and less soy is being planted in the United States. Brazil, the world's largest producer of soybeans, is more than making up for shortfall, by clearing new land for soy cultivation. While only a fraction of this cultivation currently occurs in the Amazon rainforest, production in neighboring areas like the cerrado grassland helps drive deforestation by displacing small farmers and cattle producers, who then clear rainforest land for subsistence agriculture and pasture.
[
Ethanol | Amazon]
(05/09/2007) More scientists have joined the growing chorus to support a plan by developing countries to fight global warming by reducing deforestation rates. Tropical deforestation releases more than 1.5 billion metric tons of carbon into the atmosphere every year, though in some years, like the 1997-1998 el Niño year when fires released some 2 billion tons of carbon from peat swamps alone in Indonesia, emissions are more than twice that. Writing in the journal Science, an international team of scientists argue that the “Reducing Emissions from Deforestation” (RED) initiative, launched in 2005 by the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, is scientifically and technologically sound, and that political and economic challenges facing the plan can be overcome.
[
Carbon Finance | Rainforests | Global Warming Mitigation]
(05/07/2007) Madagascar, an island nation that lies off the coast of southeastern Africa, has long been famous for its unique and diverse species of wildlife, especially lemurs--primates found nowhere else on the planet. In recent years, the island country has also become world-renowned for conservation efforts that are succeeding in spite of extraordinary pressures from a poor population that relies heavily on forest burning for basic subsistence. A large part of this success is due to the early efforts of Patricia Wright, a primatologist who has been working in the country for more than 20 years. Wright led the effort to launch the country's leading protected area and helped Madagascar become a leading global example of conservation despite its economic adversity.
[
Madagascar | Lemurs | Interviews | Conservation]
(05/08/2007) Using a new method to determine the amount of carbon stored by vegetation, a team of scientists from Caltech, the Woods Hole Institute, and INPE (Brazil's space agency) estimate the total biomass of the Amazon Basin is around 86 petagrams (86 billion metric tons) of carbon--for comparison, 7.9 billion metric tons of carbon dioxide were emitted in 2005. This means that Amazon locks up at least 11 years of recent carbon dioxide emissions, though clearing the Amazon would have a disproportionate impact due to its role in global weather regulation and other ecosystem services.
[
Amazon | Carbon Sequestration]
(05/02/2007) Commercial hunting is decimating wildlife populations across the tropics and may be one of the gravest threats presently facing rainforests, reports a series of studies published in the May issue of the journal Biotropica. The research reveals that large-scale loss of wildlife is already affecting forest health and regeneration.
[
Threats to the rainforest | Hunting]
(05/14/2007) Mites -- not ants as long believed -- appear to be the primary source of toxins used by poison arrow frogs to defend against predators, reports new research published in the early online edition of Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS).
Poison dart frogs, colorful amphibians with skin secretions so toxic that they are used by indigenous populations to poison the tips of hunting arrows, are one of several groups of animals capable of sequestering deadly compounds from dietary sources without being harmed. Until now, it was believed that ants were the primary source of these defensive skin alkaloids in frogs.
[
Amphibians | Herps]
(05/14/2007) While most plants derive nutrients from soil, some trap and consume living creatures for their primary source of sustenance. Now a special exhibit at the San Francisco Conservatory of Flowers offers a journey into the strange world of carnivorous plants. More than 600 species of carnivorous plants are distributed across the globe, including dozens of species in the United States.
[
Plants]
(05/31/2007) Hurricane forecaster William M. Gray of the Colorado State University updated his hurricane predictions for the 2007 storm season, expecting 17 named storms and nine hurricanes in the Atlantic basin. The forecasts were unchanged from his last bulletin.
[
Climate Change | Environmental Politics]
(05/31/2007) Researchers have constructed a 155,000 record of monsoon history. The findings could help climatologists better understand the impact of climate change on monsoon patterns, which play a critical role in agriculture for hundreds of millions of people.
[
Climate Change]
(05/31/2007) HSBC announced Wednesday it would spend $100 million on climate change research. The investment, which will go to the Climate Group, Earthwatch Institute, Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute (STRI) and WWF over a five year period, is the largest donation ever made by a British company.
[
Happy-Upbeat Environmental]
(05/31/2007) Thursday, President Bush outlined his proposal for reducing greenhouse gas emissions, calling for a series of meetings between the world's largest polluters to establish a global target for emissions reduction. The Associated Press reported that environmentalists quickly dismissed the plan as a "do-nothing" approach, while other critics said the plan comes too late to restore the administration's credibility after years of dragging its feet and outright rejecting action on global warming.
[
Climate Change | Environmental Politics]
(05/30/2007) Three papers published in this week's issue of the journal Nature debate the proximate causes for the global decline of amphibians, but nonetheless reveal mounting concerns among scientists over the continuing disappearance of frogs, salamanders, and their relatives. Two papers criticize a 2006 paper led by ecologist Alan Pounds, which argued that the primary factor of amphibian decline is the deadly chytrid fungus Batrachochytrium dendrobatidis, the outbreak of which is worsening due to climate change.
[
Amphibian Crisis]
(05/30/2007) Forestry Tasmania, the forest service of Tasmania, has signed an agreement with environmental activists to cease logging activities in the Upper Florentine Valley of the island. The moratorium will last through federal elections this in October.
[
Australia | Logging]
(05/30/2007) Contrary to popular belief, the Amazon rainforest is not rainy year round. Further from the equator, rainfall is more seasonal, with dry periods that sometimes last for months. In the Southern Amazon, a region that has suffered the brunt of deforestation due to clearing for cattle pasture and agriculture, April or May mark the beginning of the dry season. Rains usually return in September or October, though in recent years, dry seasons have been prolonged, with increasingly severe impacts on the forest ecosystem. In 2005 and 2006 the Amazon experienced the worst droughts on record as thousands of square kilometers of land burned for months on end, releasing more than 100 million metric tons of carbon into the atmosphere.
[
Amazon]
(05/28/2007) A previously unknown species of legless lizard as been discovered in a remote Indian forest, reports the Associated Press. Sushil Kumar Dutta, leader of a team of researchers from NGO Vasundhra and the North Orissa University, found the 7-inch long creature in the forests of Khandadhar near Raurkela in Orissa state, about 625 miles southeast of New Delhi.
[
Species Discovery]
(05/28/2007) A team of scientists have found evidence of intense hurricane activity during both cool and warm periods reports The New York Times. The findings suggest that factors other than sea temperature play a role in the formation and intensity of tropical storms.
[
Hurricanes]
(05/28/2007) Indonesia says it hopes to soon see millions of dollars from carbon trading, reports the International Tropical Timber Organization (ITTO) in its latest update.
[
Indonesia]
(05/25/2007) There is growing public support in China for shark conservation measures, but little understanding of the role of shark finning in declining shark populations, reveals a survey by WildAid, an environmental group.
[
Sharks]
(05/24/2007) Marketwatch reported more details on Ecuador's proposal to forgo development of Amazonian oil fields in exchange for payments from industrialized nations. Last month Ecuadorian President Rafael Correa said that if the South American country is compensated with half of the forecasted lost revenues, it will not exploit oil in Yasuni National Park, setting aside the area for wildlife and indigenous people. Correa said the cost would be about $350 million per year.
[
Ecuador | Carbon finance | Oil]
(05/24/2007) The European Commission is planning new criteria to ensure that biofuels are produced in an environmentally-friendly manner, reports Reuters. The move comes a month after the Dutch issued voluntary guidelines for biofuel production.
[
Biofuels]
(05/23/2007) A prominent group of 1500 scientists in over 70 countries have called for the urgent conservation of Borneo's forests, which are fast-disappearing on the southeast Asian island due to logging, fires, and conversion for oil palm plantations. Wednesday the Association for Tropical Biology and Conservation (ATBC), the world’s largest scientific organization devoted to the study and sustainable use of tropical ecosystems, passed a formal resolution in support of immediate conservation action on the island.
[
Borneo]
(05/23/2007) The first offshore wind farm in the United States won preliminary approval Tuesday from a panel of Delaware state officials. According to published reports, four Delaware state agencies ordered Delmarva Power, an electric utility, to buy wind-generated power from Bluewater Wind, the wind farm's developer.
[
Wind Power]
(05/23/2007) Shanxi Province in China will pay city government officials 2 million yuan ($258,000) each if they are able to pull their cities out of the ranking of China's five most polluted cities, reports China state media. Cities that see their air quality improve 10 spots in the national ranking system, world reward city heads 2 million yuan ($258,000).
[
Greening of China]
(05/23/2007) Scientists have discovered a possible treatment for the fungal disease that has killed millions of amphibians worldwide. Presenting Wednesday at the General Meeting of the American Society for Microbiology in Toronto, Professor Reid N. Harris at James Madison University reported that Pedobacter cryoconitis, a bacteria found naturally on the skin of red-backed salamanders, wards off the deadly chytridiomycosis fungus, an infection cited as a contributing factor to the global decline in amphibians observed over the past three decades.
[
Amphibian crisis | Happy-upbeat environmental]
(05/23/2007) Writing in the June 2007 Scientific American one of the scientists who helped put forth a radical proposal to reintroduce historical megafauna -- including camels, cheetah, elephants, and lions -- revisits the scheme, reviewing its basic points and refuting some of the criticism the plan received from the general public and other conservation biologists.
[
Wildlife | Conservation]
(05/23/2007) Uganda's cabinet has suspended a proposal to allow a sugarcane grower to convert part of Mabria rainforest reserve for a plantation, reports Reuters. The plan, a pet project of president Yoweri Museveni, faced widespread opposition that was capped by deadly riots. Reuters quotes Ugandan Environment minister Maria Mutagamba as saying the government had shelved the project pending a cabinet committee review.
[
Uganda | Happy-Upbeat Environmental]
(05/21/2007) Worldwide growth in carbon dioxide emissions has doubled since the close of the 1990s, reports a study published in the early on-line edition of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. The findings suggest that the global economy is more dependent on fossil fuels than ever before, with carbon indensity--the amount of carbon needed to produce a unit of economic output--decreasing after a period of increases.
[
Carbon Dioxide | Fossil Fuels]
(05/21/2007) A baby giraffe born October 30, 2006 at the Bronx Zoo in New York is doing well reports the Wildlife Conservation Society (WCS). The youngster is the second offspring of Margaret Sukari, a 12-year old giraffe that lives on the African Plains' Giraffe Lawn at the zoo.
[
Happy-Upbeat Environmental]
(05/21/2007) Fresh off killing a park ranger, a group of Congo guerillas said they will slaughter highly endangered mountain gorillas in Congo's Virunga National Park if their demands for immunity aren't met, says WildlifeDirect, a wildlife conservation organization active in the region.
[
Congo | Gorillas]
(05/21/2007) Fresh off killing a park ranger, a group of Congo guerillas said they will slaughter highly endangered mountain gorillas in Congo's Virunga National Park if their demands for immunity aren't met, says WildlifeDirect, a wildlife conservation organization active in the region.
[
Congo | Gorillas]
(05/21/2007) I aggregated many of the site's deforestation charts and graphs on a single page to make it easier to find these resources. These images are free for use in powerpoint presentations, slideshows and web sites provided that mongabay.com is credited as the source. I also updated the climate and energy charts page.
[
Deforestation charts]
(05/20/2007) An Indonesian fisherman caught a coelacanth, a species so ancient it is called a "living fossil", off the coast of Sulawesi, Indonesia, according to the Associated Press. The fisherman managed to keep the specimen alive for 17 hours in a pool before it expired.
[
Fish]
(05/20/2007) In a new study, McKinsey&Company, one the world's most respected management consulting firms, reports that the world should be able to cut energy demand growth by half over the next 15 years without compromising economic growth. However it says that market forces along will not drive the transition—targeted policies will be needed to overcome present market failures and policy distortions..
[
Energy efficiency]
(05/20/2007) Near record high prices for corn mean that farmers are feeding their pigs "people food" according to an article in The Wall Street Journal.
[
Agriculture]
(05/18/2007) Terra preta, the ancient charcoal-based soil used by ancient Amazonians to create permanently fertile agricultural lands in the rainforest, is getting serious consideration as a means to fight global warming and meet domestic energy demand, reports an article in Scientific American.
[
Amazon | Saving the world]
(05/17/2007) An asteroid may have caused the near-extinction of North America's first humans, argues a series of studies to be presented May 24, at the American Geophysical Union's meeting in Acapulco, Mexico. Nature reports that while the theory has been discounted in the past, new research suggests that an comet or asteroid could have exploded above or on the northern ice cap some 13,000 years ago, plunging regional temperatures to plunge for the next 1000 years. The theory would also help explain the disappearance of the continent's large mammals, including woolly mammoths, American lions, and the saber tooth tiger.
[
Extinction]
(05/17/2007) Last month Inrena, Peru's environmental agency, implemented regulations for mahogany loggers that will now require forest concession holders to replant ten times the logged amount of trees. Overall, the initiative calls for the production and establishment of one million of mahogany plantlets over 5 years.
[
Peru | Logging]
(05/17/2007) The United States is importing considerable less tropical hardwood according to the International Tropical Timber Organization's (ITTO) Tropical Timber Market Report.
[
United States | Logging]
(05/17/2007) Climate change has weakened one the Earth's largest natural carbon 'sinks' raising the possibility that increased warming could reduce the capacity of some systems to absorb carbon dioxide, reports a study published this week in the journal Science.
[
Carbon dioxide | Oceans]
(05/17/2007) The apparent increase in infectious disease among coral is likely the result of environmental change and, as such, researchers should focus on understanding the relationship between coral diseases and environmental changes, rather than the diseases themselves, argues a paper published in the August 2007 issue of the Journal of Experimental Marine Biology and Ecology.
[
Coral reefs]
(05/17/2007) Sixteen cities will get financing to make buildings "greener" through environmental renovations, former President Clinton announced Wednesday at the C40 Large Cities Climate Summit in New York, where mayors and local government officials are meeting to discuss strategies to flight global warming. The green building initiatives will cut carbon emissions and reduce waste.
[
Green design]
(05/16/2007) Some of you may have noticed already, but I've upgraded the news pages for various topics on mongabay.com. If you haven't used this feature, the filtering capability allows you to see only news for a specific topic (i.e. happy-upbeat environmental news, climate change, or species discovery, for example). These topic pages also display articles that don't make it to the mongabay.com homepage (about half of articles aren't posted on the homepage) as well as photos and background information for some subjects.
[
News topics]
(05/16/2007) The World Wildlife Fund (WWF) announced its top ten list for species in need of trade protection ahead of the upcoming Conference of the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species (CITES) in The Hague, The Netherlands.
[
Endangered species]
(05/15/2007) The booming market for palm oil is driving record production but fueling rising concerns over the environmental impact of the supposedly "green" bioenergy source. The two leading producers of palm oil, Malaysia and Indonesia, have rapidly expanded palm oil production in recent years, often at the expense of biodiverse rainforests and carbon-rich peatlands that store billions of tons of greenhouse gases. Environmentalists say that due to these factors, burning of palm oil can at times be more damaging the global climate than the use of fossil fuels.
[
Palm Oil | Biofuels]
(05/15/2007) Vitalmiro Bastos de Moura, a Brazilian rancher charged with ordering the killing of Dorothy Stang, an American nun, in the Amazon rainforest in February 2005, was convicted today of murder and sentenced to 30 years in prison.
[
Amazon]
(05/14/2007) Asian-run organized crime syndicates based in Africa are behind the rising illegal trade in elephant ivory, reports TRAFFIC, the wildlife trade monitoring network of WWF and IUCN-The World Conservation Union.
[
Environmental law | Environmental politics]
(05/14/2007) At a conference Monday, 1500 prominent scientists called for protection of Canada’s boreal forest, one of the largest intact forest and wetland ecosystems remaining on the planet.
[
Boreal forests]
(05/14/2007) Increasing the number of urban parks and street trees in a city could offset the local heat effects of global warming, reports a new study by researchers at the University of Manchester.
[
Environment]
(05/13/2007) Monday California sued the Bush administration for "illegally adopting 'dangerously misguided' gas mileage rules." In a lawsuit backed by 11 states, the suit alleges that the Highway Traffic Safety Administration's new mileage standards violate federal law by ignoring both the environment environmental impact on oil use and the country's growing dependence on imported oil.
[
Automobiles | California]
(05/13/2007) Asian-run organized crime syndicates based in Africa are behind the rising illegal trade in elephant ivory, reports TRAFFIC, the wildlife trade monitoring network of WWF and IUCN-The World Conservation Union.
[
Elephants]
(05/13/2007) Citigroup said last week that it plans to spend $50 billion towards mitigating climate change, mostly through investments in clean energy and 'alternative technology' over the next 10 years.
[
Green Business | Global Warming Mitigation]
(05/11/2007) A shift towards a drier climate in East Africa may be due to geological changes like the emergence of the Rift Valley, not global climate change suggests research published in the current issue of the journal Nature. Dr. Bonnie Jacobs, Chair of Environmental Science Program at Southern Methodist University (SMU) in Dallas, Texas, reports that the rise of the high Ethiopian plateau may have caused dramatic shifts in the region's vegetation.
[
Climate Change]
(05/09/2007) Fishermen in South Korea are killing far more whales than they claim, reports an article in New Scientist Magazine. DNA fingerprinting of whale meat purchased in local markets suggests that South Korea caught 827 minke whales between 1999 and 2003, well above the 458 they reported.
[
Whales | Oceans]
(05/09/2007) The slow loris, a big-eyed primate found in the rainforests of southeast Asia, is threatened by the international pet trade said ProFauna Indonesia, a wildlife activist group that has called for a ban on the illegal trafficking of the charismatic animal.
[
Wildlife]
(05/09/2007) Biofuels offer "an extraordinary opportunity" to reduce greenhouse gas emissions but could make "substantial demands on the world's land and water resources at a time when demand for both food and forest products is also rising rapidly," said the U.N. in its first assessment on the growing bioenergy industry.
[
Biofuels | Bioenergy]
(05/08/2007) The world is far behind carbon dioxide emissions targets set by the Kyoto Protocol reports the Little Green Data Book 2007, an annual publication put out by the World Bank. The publication notes that global carbon dioxide emissions have risen 19 percent since 1990, more than 25 percent behind goals set forth under the Kyoto Protocol, which called for a 5.2 percent reduction from 1990 levels.
[
Carbon Dioxide | Climate Change]
(05/08/2007) Indonesia's richest man plans to spend $4 billion to expand his company's palm oil, energy, and pulp and paper holdings, according to a report from Reuters
[
Palm Oil | Indonesia]
(05/08/2007) The UN Convention on Climate Change is putting global climate at risk by ignoring carbon dioxide emissions from the destruction of carbon-rich peatlands in Indonesia, charged Wetlands International, a Dutch environmental group that has highlighted the climate impact of land-use change in southeast Asia.
[
Carbon Dioxide | Indonesia]
(05/08/2007) PetroChina, Asia's largest oil and gas producer, announced the discovery of a 7.5 billion barrel oil field off the northeast coast of China. The find, in an undersea field in Bohai Bay, is the largest in Asia in four decades and will boost China's known oil reserves by 20 percent. Nevertheless, the discovery will not be enough to offset China's oil imports, which have surged in recent years due to a booming economy and rapid adoption of automobiles.
[
Energy in China]
(05/08/2007) Tuesday the U.S. Senate Commerce Committee approved a bill that would raise the passenger fleet automobile fuel standard to an average 35 miles per gallon by 2020, reports Reuters.
[
Automobiles]
(05/08/2007) 84 percent of migratory birds have the potential to be affected by climate change warned the United Nations Monday. Lowered water tables, changes in food supplies and prey range, rising sea levels, and increased storm frequency are the greatest threats to birds, said officials with the African Eurasian Migratory Waterbirds Agreement (AEWA) and the Convention on Migratory Species (CMS), two United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP)-led Treaties for the conservation of wildlife
[
Birds/a> | Impact of climate change]
(05/07/2007) A new study provides further evidence that climate change is adversely affecting coral reefs. While previous studies have linked higher ocean temperatures to coral bleaching events, the new research, published in PLoS Biology, found that climate change may increasing the incidence of disease in Great Barrier Reef corals. Omniously, the research also shows that healthy reefs, with the highest density of corals, are hit the hardest by disease.
[
Coral Reefs | Coral reefs and climate change]
(05/07/2007) Indonesia plans to rehabilitate 59.2 million hectares (146 million acres) of damaged forest throughout Indonesia, according to Malam Sambat Kaban, Indonesia's Forestry Minister.
[
Indonesia | Happy-Upbeat Environmental]
(05/07/2007) Indonesia, the world's largest exporter of tropical timber, may need to import wood from neighbors due to supply shortages caused by a crack down on illegal logging and resource depletion, reports the International Tropical Timber Organization (ITTO).
[
Indonesia | Forestry]
(05/07/2007) Malaysia plans to rehabilitate 4000 hectares (10,000 acres) of damaged forest is Sabah state, on the island of Borneo, reports the Associated Press. The environmental restoration and management plan for the Ulu Semaga-Malua forests will cost $58 million.
[
Malaysia | Happy-Upbeat Environmental]
(05/07/2007) Governments have reached a landmark agreement to end high seas bottom trawling in nearly a quarter of the world’s oceans. Environmentalists say bottom trawling, which destroys reefs and depletes slow-growing fish species, is one of the world’s most destructive fishing practices.
[
Oceans | Overfishing | Happy-Upbeat Environmental]
(05/06/2007) Brazil could improve sustainable forest management, reduce illegal logging, and perhaps cuts deforestation by introducing coherent policies for timber operations in the Amazon rainforest argues a new paper published in Frontiers in Ecology. However, successful implementation of sustainable timber production will require overcoming significant biological and political hurdles, suggest the authors.
[
Amazon | Brazil | Logging]
(05/06/2007) Last week environmental group WWF featured an account of a drive along Brazil's BR-163 highway. BR-163 has served as a key driver of Amazon destruction over the past 35 years or so, providing access to thousands of colonists who cleared the land for cattle pasture. The Brazilian government is currently upgrading the road, a development that could worsen deforestation, says WWF.
[
WWF]
(05/05/2007) The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) released its long awaiting installment on climate change mitigation, arguing that the costs of offsetting global warming will be much lower than some claim. The IPCC estimates that emissions can be reduced rapidly using existing technology at a cost of 3 percent of GDP, or 0.12 percent per year over the next 25 years, though new technologies could further reduce this cost. While the projections are encouraging, they may be conservative. Some analysts, including the well-respected Amory Lovins of the Rocky Mountain Institute, have calculated that emissions targets that would stabilize the climate could be achieved at no net cost and possibly even a profit. Even McKinsey & Company, a leading management consulting firm, agrees, putting the net cost of reducing emissions by 46 percent at zero.
[
Climate Change | Economics | Politics]
(05/05/2007) WWF has captured the first ever photos of a wild leopard with cub in Cambodia. Leopards are exothermally rare in Cambodia, which has suffered one of the highest deforestation rates in southeast Asia due to illegal logging, clearing for agriculture, fires, and unsustainable hunting.
[
Wildlife]
(05/04/2007) Greenpeace is using an novel marketing ploy to raise awareness about forest loss in Indonesia: the Guinness Book of World Records. The green group has convinced the publisher of to recognize Indonesia as the "country with the fastest rate of forest destruction on the planet." Indonesia's high rate of forest loss is largely the result of poor forest management and corruption. Each year thousands of hectares are illegally logged for timber and burned to establish oil palm plantations.
[
Indonesia]
(05/03/2007) Most coral reef fish larvae return to their "home" reefs after spending weeks to months maturing in the open ocean, reports a new study published in the journal Science. The findings improve the understanding of coral reef ecosystems and have implications for marine conservation efforts.
[
Coral Reefs]
(05/03/2007) Reforesting marginal agricultural land could significantly slow the increase of carbon in the atmosphere reports a new study based on NASA data, though it would be no magic bullet in fighting global warming since temperate forests have been shown to increase regional temperatures by absorbing more sunlight. Still, reforestation has the potential to offer other ancillary benefits including watershed services and erosion control.
[
Carbon sequestration]
(05/02/2007) Drought could cause dramatic shifts in rainforest plant communities in Central America, reports a new study published in the May 3 issue of Nature. The research shows that many rainforest plants are ill-equipped to deal with extended dry periods, putting them at elevated risk from changes in climate projected for the region.
[
Impact of Climate Change | Rainforests]
(05/02/2007) The American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) warned that environmental satellites responsible for monitoring Earth are endangered due to budget cuts and shifts in spending towards military and human space flight programs.
[
Remote Sensing | Politics]
(05/02/2007) Some of Madagascar's most biologically rich forests appear to be recovering according to research published in the open-access journal PLoS ONE. The study also offers new insight in the forces behind deforestation and the social context of reforestation efforts.
[
Madagascar | Happy-Upbeat Environmental]
(05/02/2007) The SUNY College of Environmental Science and Forestry describes a military technology that have been adapted for conservation use.
[
Poaching | Technology]
(05/01/2007) Julie A. MacDonald, the deputy assistant secretary at the Interior Department who riled environmentalists by seeking to gut the endangered species act, has resigned. The resignation comes a month after MacDonald was rebuked for illegally distributing internal agency documents to industry lobbyists. Read a statement from biologists upset with the department's actions.
[
Environmental Politics | Endangered Species]
(05/01/2007) National Geographic reports that the governments of Malaysia and Philippines have banned the use of GIS systems by tribes seeking to map their territories for the purpose of making land claims. The strategy, used by the Amazon Conservation Team in the Amazon rainforest, has been shown to be an effective way to establish land rights as well as promote cultural ties between generations.
[
National Geographic]
(05/01/2007) Despite surviving the age of dinosaurs and numerous bouts of severe climate change, amphibians are not keeping pace with the current rate of global change, reports a new study published in the journal Bioscience.
[
Extinction and Climate Change | Climate Change | Amphibian crisis]
MONGABAY.COM
Mongabay.com seeks to raise interest in and appreciation of wild lands and wildlife, while examining the impact of emerging trends in climate, technology, economics, and finance on conservation and development (more)
