By Jacob Phelps, lecturer in tropical environmental change and policy at Lancaster University in the United Kingdom. https://youtu.be/-I9cWe5N4-M My co-authors and I study and think about wildlife trade in a wide range of contexts, from the actions of wildlife harvesters imprisoned in Nepali jails, to orchid traders at Thai markets, to criminal groups poaching South African rhinos. In the context…

How Will A New Administration Affect Science This is a developing story and some statements in this article will change. With the elections behind us, many in the academic and scientific sphere are bracing for the next administration’s policy platforms and subsequent implementation. Congress and the Executive Branch now share the same political party and federal funding for scientific research…

The U.S. Forest Service is revising the policies and guidelines governing the management of federal forests in the Pacific Northwest. Two decades of ecological research and monitoring data have accumulated since the adoption of the Northwest Forest Plan in 1994. To inform revisions, the Pacific Northwest (which includes Oregon and Washington) and Pacific Southwest (which includes California) Research Stations instigated…

The following statement is attributable to Ecological Society of America President David M. Lodge. ESA is the world’s largest community of professional ecologists. “Although the US election promises great changes, the laws of nature will  remain unchanged. These include the dependence of human welfare on clean water, clean air, well managed fish populations, abundant bees to pollinate our crops, and…

a{color:#4bb6f5 !important;} ENDANGERED SPECIES / CLIMATE CHANGE: Federal Appeals Court Rules Climate Change Projections Can Support Species Listings A three-judge panel of the U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit ruled Monday, October 24, that species listings under the Endangered Species Act may be based on climate models showing future habitat loss. The San Francisco based court vacated…

By Xianping Li, of the Key Laboratory of Animal Ecology and Conservation Biology within the Institute of Zoology at the Chinese Academy of Sciences in Beijing, China, as well as the University of Chinese Academy of Sciences in Beijing, China. Li and colleagues’ Research Communications paper “Risk of biological invasions is concentrated in biodiversity hotspots” appeared in the October 2016…

ESA Fellow and AAAS Leshner Fellow Jessica Hellmann is director of the Institute on the Environment and a professor of Ecology, Evolution, and Behavior at the University of Minnesota. Some ESA members regularly practice public engagement, but it often falls by the wayside due to lackluster support from their workplace and time pressures. Four ESA members, who are in the fist…

By Elena Bennett, associate professor at the McGill School of Environment and Department of Natural Resource Sciences in Ste-Anne-de-Bellevue, Canada. Bennett and colleagues’ Concepts and Questions article “Bright Spots: Seeds of a Good Anthropocene” appeared in the October 2016 issue of ESA Frontiers.   We are constantly being bombarded with negative visions of the future, which may inhibit our ability…

Webinar: Eyes in the Sky- Drone Use for Ecological Research Many researchers use drones in terrestrial and marine environments, giving scientists unprecedented access to areas previously difficult to reach. In August, the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy announced new measures to  accelerate the safe integration and innovative adoption of unmanned aircraft systems across the United States. These announcements…

By Anthony Bicknell, Associate Research Fellow at the Environment and Sustainability Institute, University of Exeter, UK. We have all been captivated by the television wildlife documentaries that provide breath-taking video images of the previously unseen marine world. Although these may rely on the expertise of an experienced camera operator, camera technology has advanced to such an extent over recent years…

Federal Budget: Senate Republicans and Democrats Divided Over Stopgap Spending Bill The White House Office of Management and Budget held a planning call on Friday Sept. 23 with government agencies, as is required one week before agency spending runs out. Federal agencies are prohibited from spending any funds in the absence of enacted appropriations measures. The previous day, Sept. 22,…

I think that if we want to complain about how bad things are in the world, then we need to be prepared to do something about it.