Urgency
Eating Like a Bird Helps Forests Grow
A new study examines complex interactions in the middle of the pyramid, where birds, bats and lizards consume insects. These predators eat enough insects to indirectly benefit plants and increase their growth, Smithsonian scientists report. "Our findings are relevant to natural communities like grasslands and forests, but also to human food production, as these insect-eating animals also reduce insect pests on crop plants," said Sunshine Van Bael, scientist at the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute.
Previous theory on food webs suggested that the effects of insect-eaters on plants would be weak, because animals like birds not only feed on herbivores -- which is good for the plants- but may also benefit them by feeding spiders and predatory insects. If a bird eats a lot of spiders, for example, caterpillars could be "released" from spider predation and then consume more plant material. The authors found that previous theory did not hold true; in fact, the birds simply ate the spiders and the caterpillars.
Chaos and the Accord: Climate Change, Tropical Forests and REDD+ after Copenhagen
The Copenhagen Accord, forged at COP15 upended international efforts to confront climate change. Never before have 115 Heads of State gathered together at one time, let alone for the singular purpose of crafting a new climate change agreement.Even though the new Accord is still in intensive care, two things are already clear. First, we have entered an entirely new world. And second, tropical forests have the greatest potential to breathe life into the new agreement.
A New World
The old world, embodied by the Kyoto Protocol, was black and white. Only two types of countries existed – “developed” (wealthy) countries that agreed to cap their own greenhouse gases and “developing” countries that had no specific obligations to reduce emissions. Developing countries could however reduce their emissions and then sell UN-verified rights to emit, also know as carbon credits. The Kyoto Protocol capped emissions from developed countries and instituted a trading system in certified emissions reductions. All the accounting was monitored by the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), its Secretariat, and its bodies.
Guerrillas could drive gorillas toward extinction in Congo, warns UN
Gorillas may disappear across much of the Congo Basin by the mid 2020s unless action is taken to protect against poaching and habitat destruction, warns a new report issued by United Nations and INTERPOL.
The Last Stand of the Gorilla - Environmental Crime and Conflict in the Congo Basin — released at the CITES meeting in Doha, Qatar — lists a multitude of threats to gorillas, including the bushmeat trade, outbreaks of the ebola virus, illegal logging, mining, and charcoal production. The report warns that that militias in eastern Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) are exacerbating the gorilla crisis through trafficking and involvement in other illicit activities. Gorilla bushmeat moves through the same smuggling channels as illegally extracted timber, diamonds, gold and coltan (a mineral used in cell phones). Further, insecurity in the region has driven hundreds of thousands of people into refugee camps, which has increased pressure on natural resources, including forest habitat for gorillas and the apes themselves.
Forest epidemic is unprecedented phenomenon, still getting worse
The Swiss needle cast epidemic in Douglas-fir forests of the coastal Pacific Northwest is continuing to intensify, appears to be unprecedented over at least the past 100 years, and is probably linked to the extensive planting of Douglas-fir along the coast and a warmer climate, new research concludes.
Scientists in the College of Forestry at Oregon State University have also found that this disease, which is affecting hundreds of thousands of acres in Oregon and Washington and costing tens of millions of dollars a year in lost growth, can affect older trees as well as young stands - in some cases causing their growth to almost grind to a halt.
History repeats itself: the path to extinction is still paved with greed and waste
As a child I read about the near-extinction of the American bison. Once the dominant species on America's Great Plains, I remember books illustrating how train-travelers would set their guns on open windows and shoot down bison by the hundreds as the locomotive sped through what was left of the wild west. The American bison plunged from an estimated 30 million to a few hundred at the opening of the 20th century.
When I read about the bison's demise I remember thinking, with the characteristic superiority of a child, how such a thing could never happen today, that society has, in a word, 'progressed'.
Grown-up now, the world has made me wiser: last month the international organization CITES (Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species) struck down a ban on the Critically Endangered Atlantic bluefin tuna. The story of the Atlantic bluefin tuna is a long and mostly irrational one—that is if one looks at the Atlantic bluefin from a scientific, ecologic, moral, or common-sense perspective.
