• Conservation Biologist is one of the ten best green jobs.
• Watch what happens to Britain’s electric and water grid after East Enders (award-winning evening soap opera) ends. 1 million tea kettles go on within 5 minutes, that’s what happens. Seems a little strange (or perhaps an exaggeration) that such an important operation isn’t carried out by computers
• William Laurance weighs in on the claim that extinction in tropical rainforests isn’t going to be as bad as predicted.
• Despite the conflict, Virunga’s gorilla population appears to be doing okay.
• CI is offering free software for mapping hotspots, or something.
• Here’s a nice article on Santiago Espinosa, a grad student at UF-Gainesville and WCS Research Fellow, and his camera traps in Yasuni NP.
• Salazar’s saying he’ll review midnight regulations from the Bush administration’s Interior Department.

It’s condensend Conservation Blog, January 1 – 8. Back on a regular schedule tomorrow.

• Some thoughts on the Salazar nomination in the New West. Probably the key lines: “In the list of things that Obama has on his plate for the coming term, public lands reform is not at the top…Obama, no doubt, did not want to begin his administration’s tenure with a fight over his appointment to Secretary of Interior and use up any political capital over something that would distract him from his larger goals.” Watching Obama roll out his other cabinet picks was sort of satisfying because I had no dog in those fights. “Ah, another sensible pragmatist! Excellent. Good government,” I would think, “Best not to appoint too many ideologues.” To people who don’t really care about Interior, the Salazar nomination probably looks the same way. It’s a strange feeling realizing you’re that far out of the mainstream.
• George Bush, working on his legacy, just designated huge swaths of the Pacific as Marine National Monuments. Who knew that the U.S. had jurisdiction over the Marianas Trench? The Washington Post is eating it up. Well, okay, the Pew Environment Group is saying that “Mr Bush has protected more special places in the sea than any other person in history.” Maybe we all have Laura Bush to thank. Regardless of what he’s doing in the middle of the Pacific, Bush is passing a lot of midnight regulations on his way out of town. Pro Publica is keeping track.
• A nice piece on gorillas, conservation and livelihoods in Rwanda. Meanwhile, WCS says that the key to saving mountain gorillas is funding the guards that protect them.
• A beautiful poster of recently-introduced species to the Amazon.
• It doesn’t take a weatherman to know which way the wind blows, but the piglet squid is always smiling.

• Here’s an article about a BirdLife project emphasizing links between biodiversity conservation and rural livelihoods. They claim they’ve succeeded. Meanwhile, some researchers are wondering if we’ll get an increasingly homogenized landscape as people move to the city and rural areas de-populate.
• They’re going out again to search for the ivory-billed woodpecker. “We’re going to find a big black and white woodpecker,” Allan Mueller says, the avian conservation manager for TNC in Arkansas. Indeed, they’re quite likely to find a few Pileateds. I’m kind of leaning towards the “still extinct” camp — there’s actually a competent overview of the debate on Wikipedia.
• Lots of good gorilla news these days: a new park in Cameroon, African governments are “committed” to protecting gorillas at a conference in Rome, and (perhaps best of all), rangers are returning to Virunga, and finding lots of new babies. Adorable.

• More on eco-economics, from George Soros and Bill Moyers.
• Lazarus revisited: the Sumatran muntjac is no longer extinct! Re-discovered — I am not making this up — in a poacher’s snare.
• Georgia has joined the IUCN (to go along with its already full deck of CBD, CCC, Ramsar, and CITES). I wonder if anybody more geo-politically minded could comment on how this plays in with its efforts to join NATO.
• The Convention on Migratory Species declares 2009 “Year of the Gorilla”! In other news, the Convention on Non-Migratory Species declares 2009 “Year of the Arctic Tern.” [thanks SS for pointing out the weirdness of this news]
• Translocation of Indian rhinos continues to fail. Er, Indian rhino saved from its own wanderlust. Yeah, yeah, that’s the ticket… “A young rhino that went on a 14-day trek across India, through villages as well as countryside, was finally persuaded to abandon its wanderlust by conservation specialists and return to where its journey began.” Then this: “It is believed it was trying to find its way to its previous home in Pobitora wildlife sanctuary.” “Officials suspect that the animal might again go on a similar ‘adventure.’” Persuaded. &c. &c.