Last month, Obama surprised conservationists when he added plans to expand off-shore drilling to his energy policy in an effort to sway votes in Congress. Then—just as both sides rose to debate the issue—the Deepwater Horizon oil rig exploded. This morning several democratic senators joined a Capitol Hill press conference.

An oil slick originating from a rig about 130 miles southeast of New Orleans, which is dumping oil into the Gulf of Mexico at a rate of approximately 25,000 barrels per day, is drifting toward the Alabama, Florida and Louisiana coasts, and scientists are still assessing the ecological impact that will result. In the Q&A below, three members of the Ecological Society of America’s Rapid Response Team discuss the current and possible future damage of this spill and the effects it could have on the Gulf region.

The scientific community celebrated the 2009 American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA), which prioritized US scientific understanding, competitiveness, and capacity by directing $3 billion to the National Science Foundation (NSF), including $2 billion for research and related activities. Part of the reason for the windfall was NSF’s large backlog of unfunded but highly ranked proposals—something that complemented the stimulus act’s emphasis on “shovel-ready” projects.

The red lionfish (Pterois volitans) has decorated fish tanks, and invaded Atlantic waters, for decades. While sightings along the East Coast started popping up as early as the mid-1980s, lionfish began to spread rapidly, occupying reefs in the Florida Keys and the Bahamas in the 1990s. Since then, invasive red lionfish have been reported as far north as Rhode Island and, as of this January, tracked to the southern Gulf of Mexico off the Yucatan Peninsula.

This post contributed by Nadine Lymn, ESA Director of Public Affairs. BESC CoFARM participants on Capitol Hill It may not seem as satisfying to talk about as an environmental issue, but talking to policymakers about federal investment in science is an important task.  That’s what over twenty ecologists, field biologists, agronomists, animal scientists, and resource economists did last week.  In town…

Here are some highlights from the latest ESA Policy News by ESA’s Science Policy Analyst, Piper Corp.

Scientists develop a project to reroute water into the Dead Sea, male wasp spiders get a second chance at mating if they start with their sisters, 25% of fish in Dublin is mislabeled as completely different species and five species that cheated extinction. Here is the latest news in ecology for the third week in April.

In areas of the world where local people rely on subsistence agriculture, ecosystem degradation can threaten the lives and resilience of the community. On China’s Loess Plateau in Linxia County, Gansu, this was exactly the case for some time. Though this area was once incredibly fertile, decades of farming and grazing resulted in desertification, erosion and landslides—communities eventually became caught in a cycle of degradation. When agricultural productivity slowed, an increase in poverty, disease and hunger ensued.

Scientists, reporters, policymakers, filmmakers…all across the globe, people are talking about the 40th Anniversary of Earth Day. Here is what they have been saying.

The archerfish’s long distance spitting can fire a bug off of a branch and send it down to the water’s surface, and the nearly-blind pistol shrimp uses its gigantic claw to stun its prey with a bubble nearly as hot as the Sun. However, if the archerfish didn’t have keen eyes enabling it to detect an insect against a vegetative background, and if the pistol shrimp lacked its protective eye covers, called orbital hoods, these animals might never have developed the ballistic mechanisms that characterize them.

While stranded tourists and airline companies curse Iceland’s belching volcano, atmospheric scientists have found a ray of hope in the clouds of ash. In a press conference today, experts from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) said migrating ash plumes are giving scientists a chance to test new atmospheric science models and ash-sampling technology.

Millions of microbes found buried under the seafloor, fossils reveal the life of giant cockroaches and marine invertebrate struggles, a rare bird haven is explored in Colombia and urban ecologists address pollination in Harlem. Here’s the latest ecological news for the second week in April.