conservation

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Revisiting Leopold in the National Parks

The US National Park Service protects National Seashores, National Battlefields, National Monuments, National Historic Sites, National Memorials, and even National Parks. In total, the agency manages 397 “units” across the country and its territories.
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Resilient Design Can Ameliorate Extreme Storm Impacts

Variable climate patterns are predicted to be the new norm in today’s changing climate.  No longer can we rely on our normal precipitation levels or temperatures.  Models foretell increased storm frequencies and intensities as sea surface temperatures climb.  The impacts of climate change affect all of us and our planet’s rare fauna and biota.  Yet we often don’t appreciate the immense responsibility we hold until we’ve had personal experience with an extreme event.
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Preparing Autumn Buttercup for Reintroduction: It Takes a Village

Conservation practitioners face many different hurdles on the path to a successful species’ reintroduction. One of those challenges is having enough propagules.  Studies have shown that reintroductions conducted with mature plants are often more successful than those conducted with either seeds or seedlings.
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Historic Temperate Rainforest Agreement Down to the Fine Print

After 30 years of controversy that tore at the social fabric of Tasmania, the federal and Tasmanian governments of Australia finally signed the Tasmanian Forests Intergovernmental Agreement to provide support and funding that will help the timber industry transition out of native-forest logging and will protect the region’s high-conservation-value rainforests. In sum, the government will provide much-needed financial support for workers and contractors to cease logging native forests while it takes legal steps to protect these forests as formal reserves similar to national parks.
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Aldo Leopold and the Mark of the Wolf's Tooth

In the early 1900s, while cruising timber as a young forester, American conservationist Aldo Leopold, founder of the science of wildlife biology, encountered a female wolf with her pups. The common wisdom of that era was that the only good predator was a dead one, so he and his crew opened fire. But as he stood there watching the “fierce green light” fade in the wolf mother’s eyes, he felt a sharp, surprising pang of remorse. It would take him decades to parse out his feelings about her death.
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Governor Parnell Can’t See the Trees for the Rainforest

Containing about one-third of the world’s coastal old-growth rainforests, the Tongass is the “crown jewel” of the National Forest System. Its pristine rivers produce more salmon than any other place on earth. The regional economy is tied to the health of this fishery and wildlife, which in turn, depends on how the Tongass rainforest is managed.
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Kill the Frogs?

Feeling overwhelmed by civilization? Dreaming of getting away from it all? Before embarking on your great escape, you should know that these days we intensively manage all our "wilderness" areas, the wildlife you encounter out there will undoubtedly include exotic species that are wreaking ecological havoc, and that some natural resource managers now believe there is nothing we can or should do about these increasingly human-dominated "novel ecosystems." Welcome to the Brave New Eco-World.
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Win-Win for Wind Energy and Wildlife Conservation

Wind energy offers the potential to reduce carbon emissions while increasing energy independence and bolstering economic development. I am a huge proponent of harnessing wind to power our lives but this form of energy development has a larger land footprint per Gigawatt (GW) than most other forms of energy production, making appropriate siting and mitigation particularly important (Figure 1).

Restoring Pacific Salmon Makes Dollars and Sense

Pacific salmon are the iconic temperate rainforest species connecting ocean, freshwater, and terrestrial systems, and joining people to the great outdoors. They are a keystone species, on the menu of American bald eagles and grizzly bears of the Great Bear Rainforest, coastal wolves of Alaska and British Columbia, and millions of people that depend on healthy fish runs in the clean, cool water that salmon thrive in.

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