A comprehensive analysis of the current condition of birds in the U.S. was released yesterday by The Nature Conservancy, USGS, the Audubon Society, the Cornell Lab of Ornithology and many other non-profit groups. Dubbed The State of the Birds, the document reports that of the nation’s approximately 800 bird species, 67 are federally listed as endangered, 184 are of conservation…
It’s nice to have some good conservation news every once in awhile, even with caveats. North Atlantic right whales are one of the most endangered species on Earth. These mammals were dubbed by 18th-century whalers to be the “right” whales to catch because they’re huge (up to 70 tons and 55 feet long), stay close to shore, move slowly and…
An invited feature in this month’s issue of Ecological Applications focuses on the U.S. National Fire and Fire Surrogate Study, a five-year effort to assess the effectiveness of wildfire reduction methods currently in use by forest management agencies. The study compares the effectiveness of fire fuel reduction methods on restoring ecosystem health to national forests. Many U.S. forests once experienced…
President Obama issued a memorandum yesterday about scientific integrity in federal executive offices. The memo calls for the Director of the Office of Science and Technology Policy to conduct a review of the scientific integrity of the executive branch, including policies to ensure thorough scientific review, unbiased scientific reporting, the retention of scientific staff based on credentials and public access…
With funding from the recent the stimulus bill beginning to trickle down to agencies and budgets for the next two fiscal years on the line, it’s all about the Benjamins these days in Washington. Here are some highlights from today’s issue of the ESA Policy News Update, written by ESA’s Policy Analyst, Piper Corp. 2009 Budget. The fiscal year 2009…
President Obama issued a memorandum yesterday that restored scientific review to federal projects under the Endangered Species Act. The move overturned steps taken by the Bush administration in December that allowed federal agencies to conduct projects without requesting an independent review by the U.S Fish and Wildlife Service and the National Marine Fisheries Service (a part of NOAA). The president…
An article in last week’s Washington Post highlights a few of the many thousands of people and families across the globe who are leaving their homelands behind in fear of global warming. The article mentions the country of Kiribati, a Pacific archipelago, where the government is trying to figure out how to move its 100,000 inhabitants off the island because…
The New York Times’ John Tierney wrote in his TierneyLab this week about a 2007 book by Roger Pielke, Jr., a professor at the Center for Science and Technology Policy Research at the University of Colorado. Because of the doomsday scenarios John Holdren and Steven Chu have depicted (regarding world population levels and water availability in California, respectively), Tierney wonders if the…
The Society for Integrative and Comparative Biology announced this week in a letter to Gov. Bobby Jindal that the society would not hold future scientific meetings in Louisiana in response to the recent passage by the state legislature of the Louisiana “Science Education Act.” The letter was first reported Monday in the New Orleans Times-Picayune and has also drawn coverage…
This week there has been no shortage of Darwin-related events to attend about town in Washington, D.C., as science and environmental groups have clamored to put on talks, events and celebrations commemorating Darwin’s legacy. Today I attended a symposium sponsored by the National Academies , titled “Twenty-first Century Ecosystems: Systemic Risk and the Public Good.” The session I attended on…
Biodiversity hotspots are geographic areas that have both high endemism and high risk for species extinctions. Since the inception of the term two decades ago, these areas have been the focus for conservation projects attempting to save their disproportionally high numbers of endangered species. With science funding on the decline and a shortage researchers available, however, the support and manpower…
The stimulus bill that was passed by the House of Representatives last week includes $3 billion for the National Science Foundation, among other large sums set aside for NOAA and the USGS. The bill is having trouble gaining support in the Senate, however, because many lawmakers believe that the bill includes too many long-term projects that would do little to…