The Pimm Group

An innovative proposal by the Ecuadorian government to protect an untouched, oil rich region of Amazon rainforest is a precedent-setting and potentially economically viable approach, says a team of environmental researchers from the University of Maryland, the World Resources Institute and Save America’s Forests.

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Ecuador’s Yasuni National Park is full of wealth: it is one of the richest places on earth in terms of biodiversity; it is home to the indigenous Waorani people, as well as several uncontacted tribes; and the park’s forest and soil provides a massive carbon sink.

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WASHINGTON—  The Center for Biological Diversity and Florida Biodiversity Project filed suit today to obtain a larger protected area for the highly endangered Cape Sable seaside sparrow by reversing a Bush-era decision that struck down 70,000 acres of critical habitat identified by scientists as essential for the survival of the rare songbird. The lawsuit is part of a larger campaign on the part of the Center to undo a slew of decisions by the Bush administration that ignored the government’s own scientists and weakened protections for endangered species.

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 New York Academy of Sciences Media

 A panel discussion with:

Sheril Kirshenbaum, Kevin Finneran, Adrienne Klein, Stuart Pimm, Stacy Baker

 Watch it here >

 National Geographic grantee Professor Roger Kitching wants to know how much less diversity there is in tropical rainforest that has been logged than in unlogged “primary” forest. He finds some clues from the moths he draws to his lamp, Stuart Pimm reports in words, images, and video from the field, deep in the Borneo jungle.

By Stuart L. Pimm
Special Contributor to NatGeo News Watch

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Recent research by Clinton Jenkins and Lucas Joppa is covered by Folha de São Paulo, one of Brazil’s largest newspapers. The results of the research showed mixed news for conservation, finding that more of the world than ever is in protected areas, but that many ecosystems still miss the mark. Optimistically though, Brazil has vastly increased the amount of protected area in the Amazon, and Brazil accounts for almost 75% of the world’s new protection since 2003!

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On May 27, coinciding with the Dia da Mata Atlântica (Day of the Atlantic Forest), a new book was launched with a plan of action for saving Rio de Janeiro’s biodiversity. Compiled by more than 100 experts on conservation of the Atlantic Forest, including Clinton Jenkins and Stuart Pimm, the book contains detailed explorations of the problems, and proposed solutions, for all of the regions of the state. Read more in O Globo (Portuguese).

By Stuart Pimm, Doris Duke Professor of conservation ecology

This century will surely be remembered as the time the Earth bit back—not that Mother Nature hadn’t been a little testy before now. In the fourteenth century, plague spread more easily as the population both grew and became more concentrated in urban areas. When Europeans began to travel widely to other parts of the world, they took diseases with them to vulnerable continents—smallpox to the Americas, for example. And, there were plenty of regional examples of cultures, some sophisticated, that declined precipitously, abandoning long-occupied sites where people had abused the ecological services nature had supplied them.

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The Florida panther has made a dramatic recovery. Whether it will continue to survive now depends on whether we protect its shrinking habitat.

Photo by Stuart L. Pimm

By Stuart L. Pimm
Special Contributor to NatGeo News Watch

There’s a small plane circling me a thousand feet up and its annoying noise makes it difficult for me to hear the Cape Sable sparrows I’m trying to census for my research. On these April mornings at sunrise, there’s usually nothing but bird songs here in the middle of the Everglades.

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Since last December, we’ve been involved with a number of good friends in Key West, Florida, on a green initiative that includes the investigations of medicinal plants of the Florida Keys and northern Caribbean. Following from these interactions with students and colleagues at Duke University and in Key West itself, I had the good fortune of being interviewed last week together with conservation biologist Stuart Pimm on KONK-1630AM community radio by Erika Biddle for her biweekly Eco-Centric World program.

Raised in Germany, she participated in the formations of the first political Green Party after witnessing the destruction of the Black Forest (Schwarzwald) through acid rain and the River Rhein polluted through an eco disaster. In her extensive travels, she has experienced awe at the natural beauty of the earth and also outrage at the human disregard for its preservation. A Key West resident with her husband Joel for 16 years and a dedicated member of GLEE (Green Living and Energy Education) and the City’s Clean KW task force.

It is unlikely that world governments will keep their pledge to protect 10 percent of every ecological region by 2010, according to a new study published in Biological Conservation. This goal is just one of many agreed upon by world governments through the Convention on Biological Diversity. With less than a year to the goal’s deadline, the study found that half of the world’s ecoregions are currently below the 10 percent threshold.

Click to enlarge Percent of each ecoregion protected. (a) Global distribution of ecoregions. Percent of each ecoregion protected within (b) all PAs, (c) IUCN PAs, and (d) strict PAs. Graph courtesy of Clinton Jenkins.

“Without major investments in conservation, spread across the world’s ecosystems, the world is likely to miss the 2010 Target,” says Clinton Jenkins, co-author of the paper and professor at the University of Maryland. “We should not despair though. Reaching the 10 percent goal in 2011 or 2015 or later will still be a major societal achievement, helping preserve the world’s natural heritage for future generations.”

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By Stuart L. Pimm

for NatGeo News Watch

There’s an urgency to find quality food and water that forces many large mammals to migrate. A new study finds that human activities increasingly threaten their ability to do so.

Photo of zebra migration by Stuart L. Pimm

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Key West Mayor Morgan McPherson hopes to make Key West a carbon-neutral destination, create a new industry on the island and reach out to Cuba to work together on ocean conservation, all in one fell swoop.

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WASHINGTON - April 27 - More than 1,300 federal and independent scientists with biological expertise and three leading scientific societies today called on the Interior and Commerce departments to overturn rule changes made in January that weaken the scientific foundation of the Endangered Species Act.

In a letter, the scientists urged the department secretaries to rescind changes to Endangered Species Act regulations that allow federal agencies to decide for themselves if their own projects — such as roads, dams and mines — would threaten imperiled species. Previously, federal agencies were required to consult with biologists at the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service or National Marine Fisheries Service before undertaking or permitting projects. (For a copy of the letter, go here.)

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As Steve Allen said: Do not allow children to mix drinks. It is unseemly and they use too much vermouth.

Round 1: The G-word punched through the media membrane this week. Geoengineering. Big word for the headlines. Uttered by none other than John Holdren, Obama’s chief scientific adviser. He was referring to the possibility that we might be well advised to at least talk about some potential solutions to climate change that involve mitigating the shitstorm coming our way. You’d think he’d just come out in favor of pedophilia. Pour that man a drink. He’s going to need one to deal with the hysteria of a misunderstanding media.

Round 2: An unusually uplifting paper at the online journal Plos One by topnotch researcher Stuart Pimm and colleagues concludes that rainforest reserves in the Amazon really are working. Fewer fires are being lit to clear trees inside then outside. They’ve been watching fires on what might as well be called SatellitEarthTV (can I trademark that?)—the ultimate reality show: namely, the European Space Agency’s Ionia World Fire Atlas, mapping fires globally and monthly since 1996. Fewer fires are not always a result of fewer roads in the reserves, since there aren’t, at least not always. The reason is partly because of a new generation of politicians in Amazona who foresee that avoiding deforestation will make money in future markets for carbon credits. I’ll drink to that.

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DURHAM, NC – Rainforest reserves – even those disturbed by roads – provide an important buffer against fires that are devastating parts of the Brazilian Amazon, according to a new study by a trio of researchers at Duke University published April 8 in the open-access, peer-reviewed journal PLoS ONE.

“Our findings show that reserves are making a difference even when they are crossed by roads,” said lead author, Marion Adeney, a PhD candidate at Duke University’s Nicholas School of the Environment. “We already knew, from previous studies, that there were generally fewer fires inside reserves than outside – what we didn’t know was whether this holds true when you put a road across the reserve.”

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Washington DC/Wien (pte/09.03.2009/15:45) - Nicht alle Tier- und Pflanzenarten werden von der Klimaveränderung gleich stark betroffen sein. Zu diesem Schluss kommt ein Forscherteam der Universität von Wisconsin-Madison http://www.wisc.edu und der University of Arizona im Fachmagazin Science. Einige der Spezies werden sich aufgrund schneller Evolution den neuen Gegebenheiten sehr rasch anpassen.

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		IMAGE: This is the tree frog Hypsiboas semilineatus, common throughout the Atlantic rainforest of Brazil. Click here for more information.

Berkeley — With limited funding and an inadequate number of scientists, governments in countries containing “hotspots” of threatened biodiversity are wrestling with how to protect plants and animals in disappearing habitats.

But a new strategy developed by University of California, Berkeley, biologists could help scientists, governments and private organizations worldwide to identify the areas within hotspots where they should focus their time, effort and money - areas likely to have a wealth of unique diversity.

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An overview of the Smithsonian’s Symposium: “Will the rainforests survive? New Threats and Realities in the Tropical Extinction Crisis”

Nine scientists dusted off their crystal balls Monday at the National Museum of Natural History in Washington DC, weighing in on the future of the world’s tropical forest. Despite the most up-to-date statistics, prognosis for the future of tropical forests varied widely.

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