Archive for the "Pimm Group" Category

  • Family news! June 2010

    Stuart just shared the following Family News... German will be spending the summer at Duke, where his biological family is about to double in size, any day. Marion is still partially resident in A201, though employed by Lisa Curran of Stanford. Emily Buenger is now joining The Family, having spent the last year at Duke, but not with us. Colin starts his Ph.D with us in the fall, but will be visiting at the end of June. Johnny is likely to continue to be a squatter in A201. Luke and Stuart will be in Africa together in August, Stuart travelled there via PNG and Bali, Luke

  • A must-see: Key West Botanical Garden

    As I mentioned in my intro post to our week in Key West, I was definitely going to make a visit to the Key West Tropical Forest & Botanical Garden. We took the then-PharmToddler there in December 2003 when this gem was just being relaunched after decades of negligence. According to Georgia Tasker at the Miami Herald: It was begun in the Great Depression days of 1934 by the City of Key West, and built by the WPA at the same time as the city's aquarium. At one point, the garden contained an aviary, hand-made rock walls, green houses

  • FWS Tacitly Accepts Massive Damage to Everglades

    Stuart L. Pimm Background Since 1993, water managers have dumped historically unprecedented amounts of water into the western part of the Everglades — and not the East, which is the natural flow path. In doing so, they have destroyed the natural vegetation over nearly 1000 square kilometers in the West, leaving the eastern Everglades too dry and prone to fire. What has limited their ability to do more damage, has been the Federally listed Cape Sable sparrow. In the past, FWS has made it clear that the western populations of this bird were essential to its survival. Indeed,

  • New Saving Species Ads

    60-Second PSA 20-Second PSA

  • Discussion Forum in BirdLife International

    Recent paper by the PimmGroup started a discussion forum in BirdLife International. Follow it

  • Moving up

    Mariana Vale of the Pimm Group is now Dr. Mariana Vale having just received her Ph.D. from Duke University in recognition of her work in infrastructure development and bird conservation in the Brazilian Amazon. Amazing work. Watch a clip here

  • The Search for the Grey-winged Cotinga

    All adventures end at precisely the same point. Thirty seconds into the hot shower, a stream of dirty water runs down the drain. It takes with it the mud, changing skin color from blotchy grey to pink, uncovers the until-now forgotten scrapes and cuts, and exterminates the thriving ecosystem of bacteria and fungi, each with its own distinct and pungent smell, to which one's skin had been playing host. This is exactly when one has the first dangerous notion that the last days or weeks might have been fun. Most adventures start the same way - packing one's gear and heading to the airport.

  • Compassionate Conservation

    Ecologist Stuart Pimm feels a moral responsibility to protect the world's "special places"--those richest in biodiversity and most threatened by human advances. For Stuart Pimm and his group of graduate students, the trip always begins the same way--with furious last-minute packing, a visit to CVS for anti-malarials, and a final powwow in the Nicholas School of the Environment and Earth Sciences. Read more

  • Global Warming: A Threat to Biodiversity: Sustaining the Variety of Life

    Lectures on Global warming from a series with Stuart Pimm Watch it

  • Species in Trouble

    Stuart Pimm and His Students Seek Out the 'Hottest of the Hot Spots' in Their Efforts to Stem Global Loss of Biodiversity by Monte Basgall As he bustles through the Nicholas School's corridors carrying papers and files, or hunches over his computer doing sophisticated

  • A Conflict in Christian Attitudes Toward Biodiversity

    Christian attitudes toward preserving the diversity of plant and animal life can be ranked into four general "worldviews," ranging from great concern to complete indifference, conclude a Duke graduate student and a prominent Duke conservationist. Read more here