By Jon Christensen
October-December 2005 (Vol. 6, No. 4)
So this is what it feels like to be in the throes of a paradigm shift. It turns out that much of what we think we know about species and ecosystems is wrong.
That’s a strong word: wrong. But it’s the word that James H. […] Read More »
October-December 2005 (Vol. 6, No. 4)
Eat Your Vegetables
Fred Pearce’s article, “The Protein Gap” (July-September 2005, Conservation in Practice), served as an excellent complement to Jon Christensen’s call (in the same issue) for greater integration of conservation and human development objectives. John Fa’s detailed studies of the types and quantities of bushmeat consumed […] Read More »
The Golden Spruce: A True Story of Myth, Madness, and Greed
By John Vaillant
Norton, 2005
Reviewed by Jeffrey A. Lockwood
A simple story: Grant Hadwin was an environmental wacko who had a mystical experience and then cut down a sacred tree to protest the logging of old-growth forests. A self-evident subtitle: A True Story […] Read More »
By Robin Meadows
October-December 2005 (Vol. 6, No. 4)
People who feed wild animals can inadvertently take the “wild” out of “wildlife.” New research shows that providing food and water to Florida’s Key deer has led to behavioral changes, substantially increasing their density and group size. Ultimately, domestication could also lead to genetic changes.
“Losing […] Read More »
By Robin Meadows
October-December 2005 (Vol. 6, No. 4)
Protecting charismatic top predators is a common strategy for conserving biodiversity, but does it really work? New research shows that the answer is yes for birds of prey in the Italian Alps. Sites where raptors breed have the greatest diversity of birds, butterflies, and trees. This […] Read More »
By Robin Meadows
October-December 2005 (Vol. 6, No. 4)
More deer may mean fewer songbirds, which could help explain the continental-scale decline of forest birds in North America and Europe. New research shows that there are only about one-third as many forest birds on British Columbian islands that are heavily browsed by deer than on […] Read More »
By Robin Meadows
October-December 2005 (Vol. 6, No. 4)
Figuring out which species are native could be harder than we thought. Although pool frogs in Britain were long thought to have been introduced from nearby countries, new research suggests that some populations were actually native. This flip-flop in conservation status makes them the U.K.’s most […] Read More »
By Robin Meadows
October-December 2005 (Vol. 6, No. 4)
Having a relatively simple way to assess the effects of conservation corridors is critical to determining whether they are working as intended. Now, new research shows that corridors do work for bluebirds and the seeds they disperse in South Carolina: the birds dispersed about one-third more […] Read More »
By Robin Meadows
October-December 2005 (Vol. 6, No. 4)
Now there’s a new way to survey elusive forest elephants: record their footsteps with underground seismic sensors called geophones. This method can distinguish elephants from other large animals more than 80 percent of the time and can also estimate herd size.
“Given this level of precision […] Read More »
October-December 2005 (Vol. 6, No. 4)
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By Joshua Brown
October-December 2005 (Vol. 6, No. 4)
WorldCom, Enron, and Tyco and their financial disasters seem far distant from the conservation world’s goal of protecting rare species, preserving environmental quality, and maintaining the world’s biodiversity. But the downfall of these economic giants has led investors to demand more detailed accounting. Now the nonprofit […] Read More »
By Nancy Bazilchuk
October-December 2005 (Vol. 6, No. 4)
Whether it’s preserving snow leopards or managing populations of great apes, many of the world’s thorniest conservation problems are found far from university libraries and scholarly resources. Now, a new free search engine called Google Scholar (scholar.google.com) can enable researchers in the remotest places to sift […] Read More »
By Nancy Bazilchuk
October-December 2005 (Vol. 6, No. 4)
It took the invention of the microscope to enable the Dutch amateur scientist Anton van Leeuwenhoek to be the first to see the invisible world of protozoa and bacteria in 1674. More than 300 years later, genomics offers an equivalent, novel view of ocean life. Marine […] Read More »
By Jim Robbins
October-December 2005 (Vol. 6, No. 4)
For most of the 1990s, Ed Bangs, head of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service’s Endangered Species Office, helped truck wolves from Canada to the U.S. and was instrumental in establishing the first pack in the Northern Rockies in more than half a century. For […] Read More »
By Erik Ness
October-December 2005 (Vol. 6, No. 4)
“There was something strange about my new job offer,” said the young Indian. He looked nervously at his hands, caressing the scab on his knee. “Five months’ pay for one month’s work. Even if it was far away, it just seemed odd. But how could […] Read More »
