conservation

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Return to the Mangroves

In May 2009 I set out on a two-month “state-of-the-forests” mangrove tour of the Americas. I wanted to document the plight of mangroves in the region and assess the impact of their loss on the thousands of coastal people who rely on these forests for food, shelter and livelihoods.
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Exploring Florida’s Dry Prairie

This post was contributed to Eco-Compass by Reed Noss, Provost's Distinguished Research Professor for the Department of Biology at  University of Central Florida and author/editor of six Island Press books. Noss was a guest trekker with John Davis during TrekEast.
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Thank a National Forest Roadless Area

The next time you turn on the tap, chances are the water came from a local National Forest. National Forests provide drinking water for about 60 million Americans nationwide and about 15 percent of the nation’s freshwater runoff. This clean water is worth an estimated net value of $27 billion annually. And the cleanest of this water comes from watersheds free of roads and development.
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Hunting and the Land Ethic

I spent a dozen purple dusks and gilded dawns last December hunkered down in the hoarfrost in coulees, hiding in the rabbitbrush and sage during a late-season Colorado elk hunt. In an area with too many elk and not enough wolves, hunting cow elk provides a powerful conservation tool, because of its effectiveness in thinning herds.
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Getting Down to Business when Business is Bad

This past week the Center for Business and the Environment at Yale hosted the 3rd annual Conservation Finance Camp. This camp consisted of 19 practitioners working on preserving natural resources through land conservation and 16 instructors brought together to determine the best ways to finance conservation.
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Anthony D. Barnosky: Now for Some Good News

My extended family tells me they're getting a little depressed about hearing all the bad things that might happen from global warming. So I guess it's time to point out that maybe it's not as bleak as it seems. Here's the good news.
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Potato Diversity and Traditional Knowledge

As mentioned in last week's blog post, in Peru's Parque de la Papa-the Potato Park-, the Quechuan farmers maintain some 1200 varieties of potatoes named in their own language. Farmers are particularly attentive to the effects of climate change on the micro-habitats where each potato variety can be planted. Quechuan Ricardo Paco Chipa says his father constantly reminds him that the elevation distributions of potatoes today are far different than those that were common when he first farmed a half century ago.
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Crop Repatriation

Repatriation literally means to bring something back to the fatherland, taking into custody something which once belonged to your cultural community.

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