Conservation

Expeditions In The Interest Of Science, Nature And Conservation

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A male toad of an undescribed species hides in the limestone of the southwestern Dominican Republic. CREDIT PHOTOGRAPH COURTESY MIGUEL A. LANDESTOY

A male toad of an undescribed species hides in the limestone of the southwestern Dominican Republic. CREDIT PHOTOGRAPH COURTESY MIGUEL A. LANDESTOY

There is a reason why we highlight birds every single day. They are spectacular in many diverse ways, as well as beautiful in more ways than can be counted, and sometimes smile-inducingly odd; always exceptional ambassadors to the human world from their natural habitats, which are under constant pressure and threat. Birds may seem more charismatic than amphibians but from an ecologist’s point of view they are both extremely valuable indicators of ecosystem health. If you have been following Seth’s posts about the preparation for the Smithsonian expedition he is about to embark on, you will likely agree they would enjoy crossing paths with the team described in this story:

The southernmost corner of the Dominican Republic is dominated by limestone karst, a landscape with the look and feel of a petrified giant sponge. Snakes, small mammals, and fat, furry tarantulas live in the fissures and holes in the karst, as do toads, including one species that is not yet fully known to science. I met this new toad at three o’clock one late-fall morning, in a karst forest off a mining road near the town of Pedernales. I was with Miguel Landestoy and Robert Ortiz, a pair of freelance field biologists who have been friends since their youth, and who still spend much of their time looking for amphibians. Continue reading →

A Random Walk Into Science

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This title of the book to the left, and of the podcast interview (“Trading Pom-Poms For Field Boots”) on the National Public Radio (USA) series called “My Big Break”–and even the opening line below—give the false impression that this may be a dilettante story; but not at all. It is about discovering science in a classroom and coming to love it thanks to a deep experience in nature:

Mireya Mayor’s life plays out like an adventure film.

She’s a globe-trotting anthropologist, primatologist, wildlife expert and conservationist. As the first female wildlife correspondent for the Ultimate Explorer series on National Geographic Channel, she’s gone diving with great whites, she’s rappelled down cliffs and she was even charged by an angry silverback gorilla.

But some of her fans might be surprised by what Mayor was up to before she trekked around remote regions of the world. Continue reading →

Pink Pigeons in Mauritius

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Left, pink pigeon via Dick Daniels/CarolinaBirds.org/Wikimedia Commons; right Madagascan turtle dove via Roland zh/Wikimedia Commons.

We’ve featured pieces on another, less fortunate species of pigeon before, and it’s great to read news about a critically endangered species that has been making a comeback after conservation efforts. As the article by Jason Goldman for Conservation Magazine shows, however, there’s still a ways to go before the pink pigeon has fully recovered as a species:

The pink pigeon is the lone survivor of all the columbids – pigeons and doves – native to Mauritius. In 1990 the species was down to just nine individuals, but thanks to the work of the Mauritian Wildlife Foundation, there were some 400 individuals flying the skies of the island by 2013. In the year 2000, the IUCN downgraded the species from “critically endangered” to “endangered.” They’re not out of the woods yet, but their recovery remains an impressive and rare example of good news in conservation.

Continue reading →

Finger Lakes, Just Say No

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It is not a simple matter to resist all the various ways in which our natural environment is being threatened in insidious manner on a regular basis, especially proposals that appear to solve energy needs. Please, no snickering about chardonnay-sipping liberals while you read the latest such proposal in the region a number of our contributors call home, because these are actually salt of the earth farmers and craft level producers of a sacred beverage (yes, we can pour it on when properly motivated) who will suffer most if this project is implemented as proposed:

WATKINS-slide-WT0Z-thumbStandardWhat Pairs Well With a Finger Lakes White? Not Propane, Vintners Say

By JESSE McKINLEY

Local vintners are fighting a project under which tens of millions of gallons of liquefied petroleum gas, and up to two billion cubic feet of natural gas, would be stored in caverns near Seneca Lake.

A New Break for Alaska’s Bristol Bay

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Helicopter view of the area surrounding Bristol Bay, Alaska. Still image extracted from WH.gov video linked below.

We’ve hosted a good number of Alaskan “bird of the day” photos here, and we share the near-universal affinity for the charismatic Arctic mammal that is the polar bear. Two years ago, Carol Browner and John Podesta wrote an open letter on Bloomberg.com opposing any more drilling in the Arctic, and now we’re happy to announce that President Obama signed an executive order last week that bans exploration for oil and gas in Bristol Bay until another president chooses to counteract the order in the future. Read coverage by Peter Baker for the New York Times below:

Mr. Obama first put the ecologically sensitive area of the Bering Sea — home to an important population of whales, seals and sea lions — off limits to oil rigs in 2010, but that restriction was set to expire in 2017, several months after he leaves office. With the new executive memorandum that he signed in the Oval Office on Tuesday, Mr. Obama made the ban permanent unless a future president acts to reverse it and allow leasing of the waters of the bay.

“It is a beautiful natural wonder, and it’s something that’s too precious to us to just be putting out to the highest bidder,” Mr. Obama said in a one-minute video announcing his decision, which was posted on the White House website.

Continue reading →

For Peat’s Sake, Conserve Amazonia

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BBC: In Amazonia’s most carbon-dense ecosystems, an estimate 90% is stored underground as peat

A couple of weeks ago, we featured a story from another British news source about the peat success story in Indonesia, where the new president has pledged to tackle his country’s deforestation rate, the highest in the world. President Joko Widodo announced that both rainforest and peatland would be protected under his governance, even if that meant cracking down on the powerful plantation companies.

This week, scientists at institutions in the UK, Finland, and Peru published a paper in Environmental Research Letters calculating that peatlands, rather than rainforest, are the most dense store of carbon in Amazonia. Mark Kinver reports for BBC News:

Writing in the paper, the scientists observed: “This investigation provides the most accurate estimates to date of the carbon stock of an area that is the largest peatland complex in the Neotropics.”

They said it also confirmed “the status of the [Pastaza-Marañón foreland basin in north-west Peru] as the most carbon-dense landscape in Amanozia”.

“We expected to find these peatlands but what was more of surprise was how extensive they were, and how much this relatively small area contributed to Peru’s carbon stock,” explained co-author Freddie Draper from the University of Leeds.

The 120,000 sq km basin accounts for just about 3% of the Peruvian Amazon, yet it stores almost 50% of its carbon stock, which equates to about three billion tonnes.

Continue reading →

Are You Listening?

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MOTHERNATUREConservation International’s new campaign, Nature Is Speaking, has released various short films from the perspective of different elements of nature voiced by an actor or actress: Harrison Ford is the Ocean, Lupita Nyong’o is a Flower, Edward Norton is the Soil. The organization’s “humanifesto” reads,

Nature doesn’t need people. People need nature.

Human beings are part of nature.

Nature is not dependent on human beings to exist.

Human beings, on the other hand, are totally

dependent on nature to exist.

The growing number of people on the planet

and how we live here is going to determine the future of nature.

And the future of us.

Nature will go on, no matter what.

It will evolve

The question is, will it be with us or without us?

Continue reading →

Cool Green Science Celebrates The Celebrate Urban Birds Initiative

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Hummingbirds nesting in a patio chandelier. Photo by Lydia D’moch for the CUBs Funky Nests in Funky Places 2014 competition.

Hummingbirds nesting in a patio chandelier. Photo by Lydia D’moch for the CUBs Funky Nests in Funky Places 2014 competition.

The Nature Conservancy is currently promoting their blog called Cool Green Science, which we expect to be a new source for us to regularly share links to on topics we particularly care about.  We like the blog’s stated purpose:

noun 1. Blog where Nature Conservancy scientists, science writers and external experts discuss and debate how conservation can meet the challenges of a 9 billion + planet.

2. Blog with astonishing photos, videos and dispatches of Nature Conservancy science in the field.

3. Home of Weird Nature, The Cooler, Quick Study, Traveling Naturalist and other amazing features.

Cool Green Science is managed by Matt Miller, the Conservancy’s deputy director for science communications, and edited by Bob Lalasz, its director of science communications.

Of course we would like you to consider visiting Xandari for this purpose, but we appreciate Lisa Feldkamp’s point. She is the senior coordinator for new science audiences at The Nature Conservancy and earlier this week she posted on a topic that is near and dear to us:

What is Celebrate Urban Birds?

You don’t need to book a trip to Costa Rica or the Amazon to enjoy great birding. Continue reading →

Bugs Illustrating Important Things

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Thanks to Conservation for this story, more inspiring than the other one we just posted:

Steven Kutcher is an artist, an entomologist, a teacher—and a Hollywood bug wrangler. Kutcher got his start in bug art in the 1980s when he was asked to figure out how to make a fly walk through ink and leave footprints for a Steven Spielberg–directed TV project. From there he went on to work with carpenter ants in Copycat, giant mosquitoes in Jurassic Park, and stampeding spiders in Arachnophobia—of course. Continue reading →

Ticking Clocks Of Botanical Gardens

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Image © KPG_Payless | Shutterstock

Thanks to Conservation for Roberta Kwok’s summary of scientific news we had not quite expected, nor wished for:

A relaxing stroll in a botanic garden sounds like a lovely way to spend an afternoon. These green oases can encourage people to appreciate nature and bring attention to conservation issues. But some botanic gardens might harbor an ecological threat: they could be prime sources for invasive species to spread into the wild. Continue reading →

Rainwater Harvesting, Try This At Home

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rainhouse

Thanks to Conservation for this reference to a concept, a design, and a design firm which all catch our full attention:

THIS ENTIRE HOUSE IS A WATER FILTER

Hungarian design firm IVANKA is an avant-garde concrete company. Over the past decade, they’ve developed unexpected ways to incorporate this utilitarian material into everything from designer handbags to BMW concept cars. Lately, though, the company is focusing not just on luxury goods but on the most basic of everyday resources: clean water. Their new “bio-concrete” could turn houses, schools, and factories into giant water filters to produce drinking water from rain. Continue reading →

Bosque del Cabo and Xandari

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A Yellow-headed Caracara raising its head feathers

A Yellow-headed Caracara raising its crest at Bosque

I’ve posted before on the beauty of Bosque del Cabo and some of the wildlife that my family and I spotted when we were there just about a month ago, but at the time I didn’t touch on the complementarity of the coastal rainforest nature lodge with Xandari Resort in the Central Valley, where I’ve been based the last six months.

My first experience of the compatibility between Bosque del Cabo and Xandari was vicarious. One of my good friends at Cornell knew that I had lived in Costa Rica and asked for advice on places to stay for his parents and younger sister over spring break (unfortunately, he had to stay in Ithaca for varsity athletics). Of course, my first recommendation was Xandari Continue reading →

Illegal Wildlife Trade, Quantified

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Photograph: James Morgan/WWF/AFP/Getty Images

The Guardian’s coverage of one of our least favorite but critically important topics is appreciated, as always:

Wildlife crime study finds 33,000 items worth £7m for sale online

Biggest ever survey in 16 countries finds adverts for live tigers, orangutans and chimps – plus a ‘toilet-trained’ gorilla
The world’s endangered wildlife is for sale on the world wide web: live tigers, bears, orangutans and chimpanzees are all just a few clicks away. For those seeking a more manageable purchase, there are emerald boas, hummingbirds or poison dart frogs available by the dozen.

Continue reading →

Migrating Wildlife Needs More Than Merely Parks

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via the New York Times.

According to an in-depth atlas project being undertaken by the Wyoming Migration Initiative, many species of wild ungulates (hoofed mammals) require more land than what is currently encompassed in wilderness reserves. Certain areas that are under private ownership or designated as mixed use government lands are also key to the survival of species like the bighorn sheep (whose migration routes are to the left), mule deer, elk, and others.

Continue reading →

Sea Snakes, Rhinos, And The Close Observation Of Two Tragic Commons

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Thanks as always to Conservation, and in this case to Jason G. Goldman for the excellent summaries of scientific findings each week. There is not much happy news in this story, but nonetheless it is critical reading because of the detailed observation of the scientists:

Each month, hundreds of squid fishing vessels return to port in Vietnam loaded not just with squid, but also with sea snakes harvested from the Gulf of Thailand. Each month, the seven major snake processing facilities move an average of 6,500 kilograms of sea snakes, which are sold for between $10 and $40 per kilogram, depending on species. By comparison, squid sell for between $7 and $20 per pound, making sea snakes the more lucrative catch.

In the most recent issue of the journal Conservation Biology, Vietnam Academy of Science and Technology researcher Nguyen Van Cao and colleagues argue that the harvest of sea snakes from the Gulf of Thailand is perhaps the world’s largest systematic exploitation of marine reptiles in the world, but it’s one that is woefully ignored or, at best, underscrutinized. Continue reading →

President of Iceland to Speak at Cornell in T-minus Two Hours

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10421239_10152851517090132_6600294053230348364_nIn less than two hours, Ólafur Ragnar Grímsson, the fifth president of Iceland, will deliver a talk at Cornell’s Einaudi Center, as part of the Foreign Policy Distinguished Speaker Series.

Since I have a very personal academic connection to Iceland, I will be viewing the live stream of the speech at CornellCast’s webpage, and I invite you to do the same! The site helpfully provides a countdown of the talk for those of us in diverse time zones.  Continue reading →

The Sophie’s Choices Of Conservation

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Life is not fair.  Sometimes it is really unfair, especially when it comes to entire lifeforms disappearing, or not disappearing, subject to choices we humans make, with all our inherent biases. Thanks to Nautilus for bringing this research to our attention:

Which Endangered Species Would You Save?

Conservation is in the eye of the beholder.

BY CARRIE ARNOLD

You have just been appointed Conservation Czar. But there is a catch. You can only save three animals. Look at the 12 animals below and click on the three that you would save. After you make your choices, you will learn about the endangered status of each animal.

Continue reading →

Introduced Species in the Galápagos

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Feral goats on Isabela Island. Photo by Galápagos National Park Service.

Yesterday I wrote about the case of the North American beaver being purposefully introduced to Argentinian Patagonia for a business venture and having severe unintended consequences on the environment in both Chile and Argentina. Most of us think of Patagonia as a pretty faraway and isolated place, and its location so far down the southern hemisphere merits that. The Galápagos Islands are another place geographically apart from most of us–that distance accounts for the specialized evolution that took place in the archipelago over millennia.

The isolation of the Galápagos from the rest of the world for so long, and the relatively small size of the islands, means that it is especially vulnerable to opportunistic species that can become invasive. In the same way that the Canadian beavers had no natural predators in Patagonia, common domesticated goats, when introduced to different islands in the Galápagos by sailors centuries ago, were able to roam and multiply, which was the travelers’ goal Continue reading →

Introduced Species in Patagonia

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Yesterday, I wrote a bit about a book I once read and how it related to the case of the introduction of the small Indian mongoose to Jamaica to try and control a rat problem. The situation of accidentally transporting a species onto an island (or a separate continent, which often amounts the same thing), realizing the mistake when the species causes problems with the local flora or fauna, and introducing a second species to try to control the first, only to have the second species cause its own more serious issues, is a fairly common one around the planet, although Australia seems to be particularly vulnerable (look up rabbits and toads).

The case I wanted to write about today is an example of purposeful introduction of a species for human gain, but which was not properly researched beforehand and caused severe ecological damage that is still incompletely mitigated today.

Today I’ll cover the beavers in southern Chile and Argentina. The story I had originally heard, several years ago when I was Continue reading →

Neighborhood Electric Vehicles

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Ecocruise Cruser Sport (Ecocruise Vehicles)

Ecocruise Cruser Sport (Ecocruise Vehicles)

Thanks to the BBC for this new entrant into our vocabulary:

Ecocruise Cruser Sport is the golf cart, accelerated

…Depending on the region in which they are registered, NEVs are limited by law (and usually, by engine output) to speeds below 25mph or 35mph. The best resemble earnest attempts at space capsules, the worst evoke street-legal golf carts (and often because they are, quite simply, street-legal golf carts).
Continue reading →