News Roundup

  • A big wilderness bill has passed the Senate, and will in all likelihood pass the House. It’ll create 2 million acres of wilderness — that sounds amazing, but much of the area was already in core National Park areas, so not much of a change. Still, fantastic. More on it from California and Oregon.
  • It appears that forest re-generation might make the whole rainforest disappearing thing not as bad as it once seemed. Unfortunately, the species adapted to second-growth forest are generally the ones not threatened with extinction.
  • When you introduce cats and rabbits to an island that had no cats or rabbits, what do you think happens when you remove the cats? If you answered “rabbit chaos,” you should probably seek a high-level position in wildlife management, because evidently some people aren’t as clever as you.
  • Rejoice! The Hispaniolan solenedon has been re-discovered! If you haven’t heard of it, it’s a very weird creature — one of only two mammals (the other being its Cuban cousin) that injects venom through grooves in its teeth. And it’s been around since the dinosaurs. Footage here (not of the dinosaurs, sadly).
  • To end on a sad note, a ranger in Virunga has been killed by the Mai Mai militia. If you’re so inclined, you can donate money here — money goes directly to rangers and their families.
Posted by Tim on January 13th, 2009 • 1 comment
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  1. News Roundup | a Conservation Blog said, on March 17th, 2009 at 9:51 am

    [...] a public lands bill that’s been floating around Congress (previously mentioned here), and last week the House messed it up and actually failed to pass it. They were trying to do a [...]

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