• This paper’s got legs! Over the past 50 years, more than 80% of the world’s conflicts have taken place in and around the most diverse places, according to a new paper by Thor Hanson et al. in Conservation Biology. Picked up by, among others, Revkin, GEF Blog, SCB Journal Watch, PlanetSave, Scientific blogging, inkbluesky, Reuters, and AFP. It’s a cool study, but the question is if there’s any causation, and in which direction (Warfare in Biodiversity Hotspots doi: 10.1111/j.1523-1739.2009.01166.x).
• One day after its minister of environment approved a plan to convert peatlands into oil palm plantations, Hillary Clinton and the UN praise Indonesia for its work on climate change.
• Another new mammal species has been described. It’s the Hamiguitan hairy-tailed rat.
• Thanks in large part to efforts by WCS, Cameroon has a new national park for gorillas.
• The Bushmeat Crisis Task Force is celebrating its 10th year.
  
• More on the line between science and policy from Kent at Uncommon Ground. Meanwhile, James Hansen will be demonstrating against a coal power plant in D.C. Fortunately, if EPA has anything to say about it, the whole thing may be unnecessary.
  

• Andy Revkin sums up the top 10 environmental suggestions from Times readers to President Obama.
• I’m not crazy about our governor, but he did good with these new climate change regulations. Businesses in California will be funding rain forest conservation in Brazil and Indonesia. Meanwhile, his old industry is struggling to bring environmental indoctrination through a new product, CSI: Yosemite.
• Gremlins re-discovered in Indonesia. First live pygmy tarsiers in over 80 years.
• The War on the Environment has begun: the military’s been enlisted to help combat ozone depletion / climate change.
• House sparrow numbers down 68% over the last 30 years in Britain. Weird, huh? Maybe we can give them ours back.
• Daewoo is obtaining a 99 year lease for land in northern Madagascar to grow corn. Not good.

Machlis and Hanson present a really cool new research area in this month’s issue of BioScience: “Warfare Ecology.” Their article is fascinating, and brings together a lot of things that conservation biologists have recognized as true individually, but that I’d never seen aggregated under this banner before. They hit on the fact that war and its three stages (“Preparations,” “War,” and “Postwar activities”) have many consequences for the environment, both good and bad.

Some of the better-known examples of human conflict being a net positive for biodiversity is the Korean DMZ, where nature has been left “untouched” because of the conflict. Another example is the use of Department of Defense land in the U.S. to conserve threatened and endangered species. I’ve heard it said a number of times that the DoD is one of the leaders in the federal government in conservation because they have the money to do so. They’d much rather solve the problem on their land,get over it and get back to training than be caught up in protracted court battles — doesn’t that sound too refreshing to be true? Well, at least with the red-cockaded woodpecker, it’s accurate.

On the other hand, of course, war can obviously be terrible for biodiversity. They point to a survey of hippopotami in Virunga before and after the Congolese civil war, where their population dropped from 30,000 individuals to 629. I’m also reminded of this article from Science by Cohen and Carlton on invasions in the San Francisco Bay that showed a serious turning point around World War II. In this case, the global war seems to have ramped up industrialization to new levels.

The authors point out that “the cascading effects of warfare are crucial and complex,” and give a few examples including when “military expenditures may preclude spending for needed environmental management, leading to a decline in ecosystem services that further intensifies resource conflicts.”

So, yeah. There are lots of fascinating questions that could be asked about this branch of ecology. On the other hand, anybody pursuing such research is going to be have to be particularly sensitive to a potential backlash. We’ve already got enough of a misanthropic reputation; studying nature in the face of war isn’t going to help.

Gary E Machlis and Thor Hanson. Warfare Ecology. BioScience, 58:8. (doi: 10.1641/B580809)