Archive for May, 2008

  • Cape Sable seaside sparrow’s fate tied to its Everglades habitat

    For such a drab looking creature, the Cape Sable seaside sparrow has sure had a colorful history. Its name seems bigger than its bulk. It has survived fire, flood and human meddling, yet its numbers have dwindled drastically in recent years. Now, the fate of this scruffy little puff of feathers depends on the restoration of the Everglades, the only place on the planet it can be found. More....

  • Wildlife Conservation 2.0

    A new software-based approach may be the key to saving thousands of species. by Erika Check Hayden Aquatic wildlife of the Great Barrier Reef gets a boost from Marxan software Nothing pushes a species to extinction like wiping out its habitat. Consider the Hawaiian Islands: They were originally covered in trees, but by the 1950s three-quarters of the islands’ natural forests had been destroyed to make way for animal pastures and crops. Many other habitats were overrun by introduced pigs and rats. The effect on Hawaii’s indigenous species was devastating: In the last 200 years, 28 species of birds alone

  • Tropical Bugs: Squashed by Global Warming?

     It's fashionable to fret about how climate change will harm polar bears and penguins. But scientists now predict that, at least among insects, global warming will take its biggest toll in the tropics--home to more than half the world's species. Climate change models agree that temperatures will increase more near the poles than near the equator. Where it's currently chilly, a couple of degrees of initial warming could launch a positive feedback loop: as snow and ice melt, they can't reflect heat from the earth, which then warms even more. Because tropical warming will be less extreme, scientists sometimes suppose that

  • ENVIRONMENT: “Doctor” Nature in Danger

    Caribbean snail (Conus geographus). Credit:Kerry Matz CAPE TOWN, South Africa, May 3 (Tierramérica) - "When we harm nature, we are harming ourselves," says Aaron Bernstein, a doctor at Harvard Medical School and one of the authors of the upcoming book "Sustaining Life: How Human Health Depends on Biodiversity". "Few people realise that our health is directly tied to the health of the natural world," Bernstein told Tierramérica Bernstein and Harvard colleague Eric Chivian wrote and edited contributions from more than 100 leading

  • Presidential advisers duel for green cred—but not too hard

    Environmental issues, particularly global climate change, enjoyed a star turn a few years ago, mainly as the result of some very bad weather and a newly hirsute Al Gore and his 2006 film An Inconvenient Truth. For a time, as the initial presidential contenders began their campaigns, there seemed to be an historic number of pols willing to accept the premise that climate change was a reality and that environmental issues were at the forefront of voters' minds. Read

  • Dumb as We Wanna Be

    It is great to see that we finally have some national unity on energy policy. Unfortunately, the unifying idea is so ridiculous, so unworthy of the people aspiring to lead our nation, it takes your breath away. Hillary Clinton has decided to line up with John McCain in pushing to suspend the federal excise tax on gasoline, 18.4 cents a gallon, for this summer’s travel season. This is not an energy policy. This is money laundering: we borrow money from China and ship it to Saudi Arabia and take a little cut for ourselves as it goes through our gas

  • Climate change overwhelming? Consider the mosquito

    LONDON, April 29 (Reuters Life!) - Are you feeling overwhelmed by the enormity of global warming and battered by the constant stream of warnings about coming calamity? Oxford University professor Norman Myers has a message that might help you square your shoulders and face the future. "If you feel you are too small to make a difference then you haven't been in bed with a mosquito," Myers said.

  • Policy And Geography Shape Tropical Parks’ Success In Stemming Deforestation, New Paper Finds

    DURHAM, N.C. th Tropical moist forests are home to a majority of the Earth's terrestrial species, yet human activities such as logging, road building and agriculture destroy between one and two million square kilometers of these vital habitats every decade. But a new paper by a trio of Duke University researchers, published this week in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, offers cause for cautious optimism th with a major caveat.

  • Watching the detectives

    Protected areas don’t always protect as well as they should, study reveals Conservation projects often hinge on areas of land being given protection, but little is known about how well many protected areas actually do their job. Studying four of the world’s major moist tropical forests, a group of Duke University researchers led by Stuart Pimm found that inaccessibility can be a tree’s best friend. Protected areas within the Amazon and