A long-running debate over the benefits of trophy hunting for conservation is about to get a bit more heated. A new study of trophy-hunted cats concludes that—paradoxically—as protection increases for a threatened species, so does hunting. The find suggests trophy hunters are over-exploiting the rare cats just when their populations can least take the […] Read More »
Mass bird kills at television towers and skyscrapers have received extensive attention over the past few decades. But the kills are having little “discernible” impact on North American bird numbers, concludes a comprehensive tally.
Past studies have estimated that from 1 million to 50 million birds are killed annually at communication towers in North […] Read More »
Worms are turning the tables. The early bird may get the worm, but researchers say invasive European earthworms appear to be reducing densities of ground-dwelling songbirds in North American forests.
Historically, the forests of northern North America were worm-free—a legacy of the Ice Age, which ended some 20,000 years ago. Over the past few […] Read More »
When it comes to raising cattle, ranchers don’t like competition. In Africa, that has often meant eradicating or fencing out wild animals, such as zebras, that might eat the sweet grass their cattle need to get fat. New research, however, suggests that grazing by wild animals doesn’t necessarily harm—and sometimes can even benefit—cattle.
“There […] Read More »
Jon Christensen reviews Rambunctious Garden
Rambunctious Garden: Saving Nature in a Post-Wild World By Emma MarrisBloomsbury, 2011
Every so often a book comes along that seems perfectly timed to a pivotal moment in a field—when an old set of ideas is losing its grip and gives way to the new. Rambunctious Garden is that book […] Read More »
By Anders Halverson
John Muir, the pioneering wilderness advocate, liked to call California’s Sierra Nevada “the Range of Light,” and once you’ve experienced the luminous granite, sparkling waters, and brilliant sunlight of the high country, it’s hard to think of those mountains in any other way. Thousands of lakes punctuate the range, providing […] Read More »
Reports of the Eastern hemlock’s demise may be premature. Despite the invasion of a harmful insect, stands of the elegant conifer appear to be holding their own in the eastern United States — for the moment.
“When we started this project we really expected to see large-scale losses of hemlock at the landscape scale,” says […] Read More »
When researchers noticed two unusual plants growing along the shores of Whalers Bay on Antarctica’s Deception Island in January, 2009, the discovery posed a perplexing problem: Were they newly-noticed natives to be cataloged and celebrated – or potentially damaging invaders to be quickly exterminated? Now, a new study is offering a roadmap for distinguishing Antarctica’s […] Read More »
When researchers discovered a remnant population of endangered crocodiles near a Philippine national park in 1999, the future seemed bleak for the rare reptiles. Crocodiles were widely reviled and often killed, and efforts to reintroduce farmed crocodiles back into the wild were faltering in the face of local resistance. By challenging some fundamental assumptions about […] Read More »
Although often called “pristine,” researchers know that the Arctic hasn’t been spared from pollution. Air and water currents have imported plenty of smutz from far off smokestacks and sewer pipes, imperiling sensitive species. A new effort to track Arctic pollution over the last 25 years, however, finds that efforts to control some of these pollutants […] Read More »
Wind farmers take note: You can’t count on common forecasting methods to figure out whether the turbines will kill birds. A new study from Spain concludes that pre-construction studies are pretty bad at predicting which turbines will lead to deadly bird collisions.
“The prevention of bird collisions in newly built wind farms is a critical […] Read More »
Conservation strategies that have worked well in temperate regions and in the developed world appear to be struggling in the tropics. Part of the failure, three researchers conclude in a new commentary, “is due to top–down conservation planning that has been conducted without taking local socioeconomic considerations into adequate account.” A bottom-up approach that stresses […] Read More »
Drawing on tissues stored in an unusual “frozen zoo,” researchers have created the first stem cells from endangered species. In humans, researchers are excited about stem cells – which can become any tissue in the body – because of their potential to treat disease. Now, it is possible endangered organisms could see some benefit too. […] Read More »
Rat Island: Predators in Paradise and the World’s Greatest Wildlife Rescue By William Stolzenburg Bloomsbury, 2011
William Stolzenburg’s compelling tale, Rat Island: Predators in Paradise and the World’s Greatest Wildlife Rescue, is the story of impassioned conservationists attempting to save vulnerable island fauna (mostly birds) from the ravages of accidentally introduced predators (mostly rats). […] Read More »
A provocative essay calling on conservation biologists to stop bad-mouthing nonnative species has sparked a testy showdown in the pages of the prestigious journal Nature.
“Over the past few decades, ‘nonnative’ species have been vilified for driving beloved ‘native’ species to extinction and generally polluting ‘natural’ environments,” a team of 19 researchers wrote in […] Read More »
