The Uneasy Chair
By Jon Christensen
Conservationists often complain about other people’s priorities. It’s a shame, for instance, that the environment basically dropped off the radar screen as a priority in this year’s U.S. presidential election. But why should we care about conservation priorities when they don’t matter much anyway?
That’s one reading of a […] Read More »
Fall 2005 (Vol. 5, No. 4)
Torn between Optimism and Cynicism
Issues raised in Peter Corkeron’s recent paper (featured in the Summer 2004 Journal Watch) have me torn between two views — those of the optimist and those of the cynic. The enormous quantities of fish that we lift from the oceans clearly qualify us […] Read More »
Books
Rapture of the Deep: The Art of Ray Troll
University of California Press, 2004
Reviewed by Kieran Mulvaney
To Alaskans, marine scientists, paleontologists, and environmentalists, Ray Troll has long been something of a cult superstar. Now, with the publication of his first complete anthology, the rest of the world has a chance to become […] Read More »
About half of the roughly 300 primate species worldwide are threatened, and knowing which species are likely to be harmed by which threats is key to protecting them. In the most comprehensive such analysis to date, researchers assessed primates’ vulnerabilities to forestry, agriculture, and hunting and then linked these vulnerabilities to underlying biological traits.
“This […] Read More »
Anyone who’s seen a turtle cross the road knows that these slow-moving reptiles are no match for the cars whizzing past. But there has been little evidence that roads are a threat to turtle populations. Now new research suggests that cars are picking off the females: painted turtle populations are 73 percent male, and snapping […] Read More »
One of the mysteries of global amphibian decline is that many affected populations are in protected areas. Although biologists suspect that introduced predatory fish may be the culprit in the decline of mountain frogs, there has been little evidence that the two are directly linked. Now new research shows that mountain yellow-legged frogs (Rana mucosa) […] Read More »
Most California grasslands have been taken over by European plants. Conventional wisdom holds that these non-native species outcompete the native grasses. But new research shows that native grasses can actually out-compete non-natives in coastal prairies, thus giving hope for restoring them.
Jeffrey Corbin and Carla D’Antonio, both from the University of California, Berkeley, present this […] Read More »
More than a century of fire suppression has turned many western U.S. forests into tinderboxes crammed with flammable young trees and woody debris. Although the problem is obvious, the solution is not. New research suggests that some of these forests could be restored with intense prescribed fire.
“Especially in remote and roadless areas, intense prescribed […] Read More »
A new analysis shows that despite decades of conservation effort, most estimates of forest elephant populations are unreliable. Knowing how many forest elephants there are and where they live is key to deciding which populations are most important to protect.
“The frequent repetition of crude guesses has created a false sense that we know more […] Read More »
Case Study
By Wallace J. Nichols and Carl Safina
Fall 2004 (Vol. 5, No. 4)
San Ignacio, Baja California Sur, Mexico, April 2003
We are sitting on the outdoor deck of a little village restaurant across from a man named after St. Francis, the patron saint of animals. He’s known by his nickname, “Gordo,” […] Read More »
Numbers in Context
by Jonathan M. Hoekstra, Timothy M. Boucher, Taylor H. Ricketts, and Carter Roberts
Click charts and graphs above to see an enlargement
If we set conservation priorities based on species loss, tropical rainforests command the most attention. If however, we look at rates of land conservation (e.g., to agriculture and cities), a […] Read More »
Innovations
By Erik Ness
Like most wildlife biologists, David Wilkie never imagined he would one day serve up wild animals in an African café. “I never thought I’d be talking about elasticities of bushmeat demand either,” says Wilkie, of the Wildlife Conservation Society (WCS) in New York. But the complexities of the bushmeat crisis have […] Read More »
Innovations
By Nancy Bazilchuk
In a world where hungry children, congested roads, and number of unemployed citizens have long been the standard measure of a nation’s quality of life, Britons have gone green. In 1999, the British government decided the numbers of corn buntings (Miliaria calandra) and grey partridges (Perdix perdix) were as important in […] Read More »
By Nancy Bazilchuk
In 2003, trained trackers combing the rich jungles in the Republic of Congo’s Lossi Sanctuary for gorillas and chimpanzees stumbled upon a disturbing trend. Duikers, dog-sized antelopes that weave and dive through the jungle’s dense undergrowth, were dying at an astounding rate—local indices dropped 50 percent compared to a 2000 census. Gorillas […] Read More »
Feature
By Jeffrey Lockwood
Fall 2004 (Vol. 5, No. 4)
In your dream a blizzard sweeps over the horizon, the sky fills with swirling flakes.
But the fields are green and the breeze is hot. As you wrestle with the incongruity, the sparkling snowflakes transform into voracious locusts—and your disbelief transforms into terror. A fluttering […] Read More »
