President Obama Should Include the Tongass In Alaska’s First Line of Global Warming Defense

I began my career as forest ecologist in the 1990s, cataloging the remarkable web-of-life in the old-growth rainforests of Prince of Wales Island. Since then, I have worked with rainforest ecologists around the world to document exceptional places like the Tongass and how they can contribute to a global climate change solution. Last April, hundreds of scientists, including myself, sent President Obama a letter asking him to include the Tongass as Alaska’s first line of climate defense.
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Temperate Rainforests Down Under Owe Existence to Ancient Ark

Some 38-45 million years ago, Australia broke off from its parent super-continent, Gondwana, and began drifting northward.  In its long and arduous journey, the ark rafted ancient species forced to cope with a cooling and drying climate. Some, like Antarctic beech (Nothofagus spp.), were forced into climatic refugia along the eastern edge of Australia where it remained moist enough to cradle the evolution of rainforest communities in changing times.
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Bird Survey Suggests If You Plant It, They Will Come

The results of last month's annual Hakalau Forest National Wildlife Refuge Bird Survey indicate that birds may colonize reforested areas much faster than experts had predicted. This year's surveyors spotted all five of the common native forest birds and four endangered forest birds within sections of the refuge that two short decades ago had been treeless areas dominated by non-native plants and animals. "I never thought I'd live to see this," said Jack Jeffrey, who coordinated this bird survey and was the refuge biologist from 1990-2008.
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World's Most Unique and Endangered Forest Needs Our Help

No, it's not in Brazil or Borneo. It's actually in the good old USA, literally and figuratively clinging to a steep slope in a drainage called Mahanaloa Gulch on the Hawaiian Island of Kauai. We need to stop twiddling our thumbs and SAVE THIS FOREST NOW.
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New Lessons from Old Europe

Scientists tend to distrust conclusions that are not based on empirical data and adequate sample sizes. So take what I'm about to say with a large grain of salt, since it is neither empirical nor based on sufficient data.