This post contributed by Celia Smith, ESA Education Programs Coordinator A high standard was set by the first symposium of the Ecological Society of America’s (ESA) weeklong 2012 Emerging Issues Conference, which kicked off Monday at the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service’s National Conservation Training Center (NCTC) in Shepherdstown, WV. The first of four sessions, Symposium I:  “Protected Areas: Fostering…

By Liza Lester, ESA communications officer A dead pronghorn (Antilocapra americana) on a back road of the Thunder Basin National Grassland in northeastern Wyoming. Coal, oil and gas development in the basin have brought more vehicles, and more conflicts with wildlife. Rob Mutch, 2004. FRESH water scientist (and MacArthur Fellow and member of the National Academy of Sciences) Peter Gleick…

By Liza Lester, ESA communications officer A brown pelican, photographed during the 2010 Great Backyard Bird Count by Bob Howdeshell, of Tennessee. Used by permission. ______________________ THIS WEEKEND, as the US celebrated President Washington’s birthday, the National Audubon Society, Bird Studies Canada, and the Cornell Lab of Ornithology were celebrating birds, with the fifteenth annual Great Backyard Bird Count. As…

Here are some highlights from the latest ESA Policy News by Science Policy Analyst Terence Houston.  Read the full Policy News here. WHITE HOUSE: FY 2013 BUDGET PRIORITIZES INNOVATION AMIDST FISCAL AUSTERITY On Feb. 13, President Obama released his budget proposal for Fiscal Year 2013, which begins Oct. 1, 2012. While the $3.8 trillion budget continues the president’s focus on fiscal…

This post contributed by Nadine Lymn, ESA Director of Public Affairs “What do the small ground finch, medium ground finch, and Charlie Sheen have in common?  You may know the answer after today’s lecture…;)” James McGraw (pictured above), a professor of ecology at West Virginia University, posted the above question on his Facebook Group page for undergraduate biology.  After several…

This post contributed by Sean Hoban, a post-doc in conservation biology at the University of Ferrara, Italy   How important can five words be?  Very! The 1973 Endangered Species Act states that a species may be regarded as endangered if “threatened with extinction […] throughout all or a significant portion of its range” (my underline, hereafter, SPR).  Remarkably, neither the…

Here are some highlights from the latest ESA Policy News by Science Policy Analyst Terence Houston.  Read the full Policy News here. HOUSE: SUBCOMMITTEEE ASSESSES EPA SCIENTIFIC REVIEW PROCESS On Feb. 3, the House Science, Space and Technology Subcommittee on Energy and Environment convened for a hearing entitled “Fostering Quality Science at EPA: Perspectives on Common Sense Reform.” The hearing sought…

The gathering momentum of *citizen science*. Google searches for the phrase spiked in 2011 (scaled to the average worldwide traffic for the phrase). Credit, Google Trends.   CITIZEN science is not an entirely new concept. The Audubon Society’s popular Christmas Bird Count has run continuously for over a hundred years. When the society founded the program in 1900, the concept…

Are exotic pythons devastating Florida’s Everglades National Park? By Liza Lester, ESA communications officer Sometimes the snake wins. The exotic Burmese python is a new and deadly predator allegedly squeezing the wildlife of Florida’s already environmentally pressured Everglades. Large snakes have been observed swallowing American alligators and 80-pound deer, but more common prey are small mammals like raccoons, rabbits, and…

This post contributed by Terence Houston, ESA Science Policy Analyst A commonly held sentiment is that cold winters prevent established non-native constrictors like the Burmese python in southern Florida from extending north. However, a recent report from the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service suggests that adaptability may eventually punch a hole in this notion. The FWS report studied the impacts…

Here are some highlights from the latest ESA Policy News by Science Policy Analyst Terence Houston.  Read the full Policy News here. STATE OF THE UNION: PRESIDENT HIGHLIGHTS CLEAN ENERGY, RESEARCH GOALS For his third formal State of the Union address, President Obama outlined a set of proposals and initiatives for the 112th Congress to act upon in its final year….

This post contributed by Celia Smith, ESA Education Programs Coordinator Credit: xkcd.com In science, neat and tidy explanations rarely tell the whole story, and that is exactly what researchers at the University of Missouri have found about stereotype threat theory in their paper on the subject, currently in press at the Review of General Psychology. Though it may sound like…