News Roundup

George Church (director of the Center for Computational Genetics at Harvard Medical School) reflects on the benefits and pitfalls of biotechnology in solving environmental problems. Unforgivably, no mention of bringing back the woolly mammoth.
A deeper article from the NY Times on the Macquarie Island debacle (introduce cats, cats decimate island, remove cats, rabbits decimate island) covered earlier this year.
Environmental groups want federal government to stop paying for wildlife to be slaughtered to protect livestock. Best reason I’ve ever heard: “the use of helicopters and small planes to fly low enough for contracted sharp shooters to pick off the coyotes has resulted in plane crashes killing 10 and injuring 28 from 1979-2007.” But won’t somebody think of the cattle?!? But seriously, beef is really emissions-heavy. Even local, grass-fed beef. (I need to remind myself every once in a while…)
I will not even try to conservation-spin this in a “they’re getting rid of corn syrup, that’s great” way. I am just psyched that Pepsi will be selling Pepsi made from cane sugar in the United States again (and not just on Kosher-heavy holidays). “Pepsi throwback.”

Posted by Tim on February 17th, 2009 • • 1 comment
Tags: biotech•invasives•livestock•pepsi

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Between an endangered rock and a critically endangered hard place | a Conservation Blog said, on March 23rd, 2010 at 1:04 pm

[...] complexity leads to a lot of problem in application. I can’t think of a better example than Macquarie Island, where cats were introduced about a century ago. The cats then destroyed the local community [...]