conservation
sheril | August 16, 2008Jackson JBC. (2008) Ecological extinction and evolution in the brave new ocean. Proc Natl Acad Sci USA 105 (Suppl):11458-11465.
No caption necessary:
Oil and Gas Projects in the Western Amazon Threaten Wilderness, Biodiversity, and Indigenous Peoples
sheril | August 14, 2008A vast area of the western Amazon--arguably the most intact and biodiverse part of the Amazon--is now wide open for oil and gas development. This is a new threat to the forest, biodiversity, and many indigenous groups living in the region. Research by Finer et al. in PLoS ONE demonstrates full scale impacts, including an assessment of relevant conservation and indigenous rights policies.
Oil and gas blocks in the western Amazon
The western Amazon is the most biologically rich part of the Amazon basin and is home to a great diversity of indigenous ethnic groups, including some of the world'…
edyong | August 12, 2008An international group of scientists have recruited a team of unlikely research assistants to help them study the Southern Ocean that surrounds Antarctica - elephant seals. Boldly going where current buoys, satellites and ships cannot, the intrepid fieldworkers will help to fill blind spots in our knowledge of this most inaccessible of oceans.
Our knowledge of the effects of climate change at the planet's poles is heavily skewed towards the Arctic. There, it's clear that the sea-ice cover is gradually shrinking. But at the opposite end of the world, in Antarctica, data is harder to come by…
sheril | August 5, 2008A new reason for hope reported in The New York Times:
A grueling survey of vast tracts of forest and swamp in the northern Congo Republic has revealed the presence of more than 125,000 western lowland gorillas, a rare example of abundance in a world of rapidly vanishing primate populations.
edyong | August 2, 2008
The next time you buy salmon from your local supermarket, think about the hidden costs in each succulent fillet. Compared to wild fish, farmed salmon is far less likely to burden your wallet. But by buying it, you may be placing a much larger burden on the environment. Fish stocks around the world are declining due to over-fishing and 'aquaculture' - the farming of fish - was originally thought to help. But farming brings with it a host of ecological problems.
If the farmed fish are meat-eaters, as salmon are, they must be fed on the proteins and oils of wild fish, which does nothing to…
grrlscientist | July 30, 2008tags: researchblogging.org, animal migration, ecology, conservation, habitat destruction, global warming, overexploitation
Image: Makoa Farm Horseback Riding Safaris in Tanzania [larger view].
What do salmon, passenger pigeons, American bison and wildebeest have in common? They all are (or were) migratory, and their populations either are declining or have become extinct. In fact, the populations of nearly all migratory animals, from insects to fishes, birds to mammals, are suffering disproportionate population declines that sedentary species are not experiencing. This is hardly…
grrlscientist | July 27, 2008tags: conservation, captive breeding, Houston Zoo, St. Vincent Parrot, St. Vincent Amazon, Guilding's Amazon parrot, Amazona guildingii, ornithology
Adult St. Vincent Amazon parrot, Amazona guildingii.
Image: Orphaned [larger view].
The Houston Zoo in Houston, Texas, successfully hatched another endangered St. Vincent Amazon parrot, Amazona guildingii, on 28 May 2008. The young parrot was the third of this species to hatch at the Houston Zoo, which is the only zoo in the United States to successfully breed this species in captivity. The chick was named Vincent after the father of the…
edyong | July 22, 2008A complete ban on fishing can save coral reef communities in more ways than one. A few weeks ago, I blogged about a study which found that the coral trout, a victim of severe overfishing, was bouncing back in the small regions of the Great Barrier Reef where fishing has been totally forbidden. It certainly makes sense that fish will rebound when fishing ceases, but a new study reveals that the bans have had more indirect benefits - they have protected the corals from a predatory starfish.
The crown-of-thorns starfish (Acanthaster planci) is a voracious hunter of corals and a massive problem…
grrlscientist | July 21, 2008tags: bird olympics games, conservation, BirdLife, streaming video
The Olympic Games are starting soon in Beijing. People from all over the world will be competing to be the best. However, some of the world's greatest athletes are birds. Birds can travel faster, higher, deeper and further than any human. Celebrating the amazing achievements of birds, next month BirdLife will be running the BirdLife Games. This will be a series of online events designed to see if you can spot a winner. Given a line-up of avian competitors, we'll be challenging you to pick the winner for each BirdLife event. […
edyong | July 11, 2008
If you've never had the pleasure of swimming among a coral reef, you might want to get your chance sooner rather than later. Yesterday, the journal Science published the first comprehensive global assessment of the status of the world's reef-building corals, and it's results don't make for comforting reading. Almost a third of the 700-plus species surveyed face extinction; no group of land-living species, except possibly for the amphibians, are this threatened.
A team of 39 scientists led by Ken Carpenter, director of the Global Marine Species Assessment gauged the extinction risk faced by…
sheril | July 7, 2008As I've written in the past, species are constantly blinking in and out of existence. This may or may not be of concern depending on your scale of interest. After all, extinction is the only real certainty.
Last month Andy Revkin asked, 'Does the world need leatherback turtles? '
Need, eh? Well, maybe he's posing the wrong question... We don't fully understand the ecological role of sea turtles, but we do know their numbers are a shadow of former abundance. Their loss is reflective of a growing global trend: the loss of ocean species through fishing down food webs and incidental bycatch…
grrlscientist | July 3, 2008tags: researchblogging.org, endangered species, estimating extinction risk, demographic heterogeneity, demographic stochasticity, environmental stochasticity, Mechanistic stochastic models, Brett Melbourne
The endangered pelagic thresher shark, Alopias pelagicus.
More than half of the world's shark species are under the threat of extinction
due to overfishing by humans, especially for sharkfin soup.
Image: Kevin Markey, 2004 (Pacific Shark Research Center).
The International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) released a report in 2007 indicating that more than 16,000 animal species…
grrlscientist | July 2, 2008tags: researchblogging.org, global warming, climate variation, climate change, penguins, El Nino, marine zoning, P. Dee Boersma
Adélie penguins, Pygoscelis adeliae, and chicks.
(a) Adélie penguin chicks may get covered in snow during storms, but beneath the snow their down is warm and dry. (b) When rain falls, downy Adélie chicks can get wet and, when soaked, can become hypothermic and die.
Images: P. Dee Boersma.
According to an article that was just published in the journal BioScience, penguin populations are declining sharply due to the combined effects of overfishing and pollution…
grrlscientist | June 30, 2008tags: smuggling parrots, poaching parrots, ProFauna Indonesia, endangered species, conservation, politics
Indonesians protest the illegal wildlife trade.
Image: ProFauna Indonesia.
You know that I am passionate about the parrots of the south Pacific Ocean -- I devoted my life to researching them, in fact. So it is my responsibility to bring a very important and tragic issue to your attention. Indonesia, home to many of the birds that I love so much, is killing its endemic parrots through poaching and smuggling.
There are 85 parrot species in Indonesia, 14 of which are globally threatened…
grrlscientist | June 29, 2008One of the world's largest intact forest ecosystems -- the breeding grounds for many of the world's warblers, ducks and other migratory birds -- is in big trouble. Oil and gas, timber, mining, and other industries are destroying vital habitat for birds and other wildlife in Canada's boreal forest. Canada's boreal forest spans more than 1.4 billion acres and provides vital breeding habitat for many of the world's birds -- including nearly 40% of North America's ducks, geese, and swans. Lynx, grizzlies and wolves also make their home in the boreal forest. And it is one of the world's largest "…
grrlscientist | June 26, 2008tags: The Last Flight of The Scarlet Macaw, conservation, endangered species, parrots, politics, Bruce Barcott, book review
Nonfiction books are often thought of as being "good for us", as if they were literary vitamin tablets, but many people take their summers off from their vitamins by reading trashy novels or mysteries while ensconced under an umbrella on a sandy beach. So what would you say if you could read a book that has the best qualities of both genres? If you think that such a book doesn't exist, well, think again: Bruce Barcott's recently published book, The Last Flight of The…
sheril | June 25, 2008Well I'm impressed...
It's called EVO or www.evo.com. The goal is simple: To increase transparency in the green market, decrease green washing, and encourage corporate responsibility.
In response to this increasing demand for product transparency, EVO spent several years developing an objective and scalable technology to screen millions of products for their green attributes. EVO publishes and rates the best products (
It's a simple idea, but an entirely unique and honest approach toward empowering individuals. The message is that we can all help to solve environmental problems by making…
edyong | June 23, 2008In 2004, the Australian Government turned a third of the Great Barrier Reef into the largest network of no-fishing zones in the world. All fishing was banned in an area of sea just smaller than England. It was a bold and controversial political move - jobs and livelihoods, it was said, were on the line. But the plan went ahead and in just a few years, there are signs that it's working. One of the reef's most heavily fished species - the coral trout- is enjoying a dramatic comeback, thanks to this most ambitious of marine conservation projects.
The vast expanse of the Great Barrier Reef is…
grrlscientist | June 21, 2008tags: researchblogging.org, quaternary ammonium compounds, fertility problems, repoductive problems, zoos, aviculture, medicine, disinfectants
I know a fair number of zoos and aviculturists who disinfect the premises occupied by their breeding flocks of birds with quaternary ammonium compounds to prevent the spread of diseases, especially viral disease. But according to a story that just appeared in the top-tier journal, Nature, exposure to the quaternary ammonium compounds, ADBAC (n-alkyl dimethyl benzyl ammonium chloride) and DDAC (didecyl dimethyl ammonium chloride), could cause a sharp…
sheril | June 18, 2008Remember those disgusting vast areas of the ocean depleted of oxygen and devoid of fish, shrimp, and marine life?
They're getting worse.