News Roundup

  • In the past few weeks, two California condors have been shot with lead pellets (not fatally, they’re both recovering). The Center for Biological Diversity has hired a private investigator to capture the ne’re-do-well. I have to admit, the wacky aspects of conservation are part of what make the field so appealing. Somebody at CBD came into work a few days ago and was instructed to find a PI in Los Angeles. I’m sure they never expected to be doing such a thing.
  • WCS researchers have discovered a huge population of Irrawaddy river dolphins. (More from DotEarth). It’s always interesting to see how conservation organizations spin good news (usually awkwardly). This is exciting — BUT THEY’RE STILL AT RISK! While I think that’s definitely true, it goes back to that problem of messaging. It’s hard to get people to care more than they do, while simultaneously saying that things aren’t as bad as we thought.
  • In defense of the Red List. “Really, we’re getting better!!!”
  • Rare shark found, eaten.
  • New work on fossilized coral reefs is suggesting that sea levels can rise rapidly. Okay, so sea levels rose rapidly 100,000 years ago. But we still have coral… maybe this paradox is address in a new book by (Cal’s own) Tony Barnosky called Heatstroke: Nature in an Age of Global Warming. Worth checking out.
Posted by Tim on April 15th, 2009 • • Add a comment
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Paper Roundup

  • Science recently published further evidence of the “broken window” theory, which suggests that people act badly in degraded environments. These studies are about human-dominated environments, but it seems likely that the same is true for more “natural” areas, too.
  • Christopher Dunn argues in Nature that cultural diversity ought to be preserved alongside biodiversity. He even suggests that maps of hotspots of the two tend to overlap. Okay, so let’s make a deal: people can stay in and around areas of high biodiversity if they agree to live according to their “traditional” culture — any development or significant growth and you’ve got to move to the city. Fair?
  • Yesterday I mentioned some worry about homogenizing landscapes in rural areas. There was a paper published in Conservation Biology by Rahmig et al. recently that suggested exactly that: homogenization of farming practices has led to declines in avian diversity.
  • Also in Cons Bio, Ben Collen and colleagues at ZSL take a closer look at the “Living Planet Index,” one of the 22(!) headline indicators established by the Convention on Biological Diversity used to assess trends in biodiversity loss. Their conclusion: it’s good, but we need more data.
  • Kindberg et al. have shown that hunter-reported observations of moose in Sweden were (if corrected) a pretty good method of monitoring.
Posted by Tim on December 3rd, 2008 • • Add a comment
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