As this story in the Seattle Times suggests, the effectiveness of a wildlife refuge is directly linked to how well you can protect what is inside it: "... an international black market ... fuels the illegal slaughter of an estimated 500 eagles each year in southwest British Columbia alone, and an unknown number in Washington state." Many nature preserves around the world have little or no protection, making them essentially worthless as preserves. There are not enough funds to hire an army of forest rangers to be everywhere all the time. The biggest problem with any system that relies on …

According to an article on BBC News, huge flocks of red-beaked quelas have destroyed up to 70% of the crops in northern Nigeria. They have been driven there in a search for food from neighboring Niger, which has just experienced a drought and a plague of locusts. The poor people of Niger have been thrown into yet another famine and children are once again starving.The people of Niger, the quelas, and the locusts are all caught up in a natural population boom-and-bust cycle. Many of us have learned to associate the word natural with goodness, but famine can hardly be …

The ads combined with the Indian proclivity to combine slightly askew English phrases made this article an interesting read. It also highlighted the fact that India is losing the battle to save its biodiversity, thanks in part to the human male's residual instincts to demarcate territory. The environment and forest ministry has given an outright thumbs down to a proposal for Indo-US cooperation for Bengal tiger conservation which would commit the US to funnel huge sums to the cause in return of a say in the project... Packing punch in its dissenting note to the proposal by the external affairs …

An article in Pacific Northwest Magazine discussing Seattle's recurrent Canada goose problems got me thinking. Cities are primarily for people, and they have their own microenvironments. Some animals and plants thrive inside these ecosystems, and some do not. Creatures that can live among us already do. Attempts to introduce other species to please our sensibilities will more often than not turn into expensive failures or chronic damage-control exercises. Another example of this is the decade-long effort by Seattle citizen groups to reintroduce coho salmon to Thornton creek. My daughter and I recently visited the outlet to this creek, where it …

I ran into Andy Brett scavenging for material over on Biopolitical's blog not too long ago. I had beaten him to the punch on this one and he generously conceded the topic to me. I then went on vacation and am just now getting around to finishing it. Nature (which I subscribe to but have not read yet) published essays from a number of African leaders on the topic of the now-completed G8 summit. One of the contributors, Anthony Nyong from Nigeria, had this to say: Poverty is a major cause of environmental degradation and causes people to live unsustainably. …

I just spent six days in a tent with my family. This was part of an annual event where we gather at a lake resort on the dry side of the mountains with several other families for a week of communing with nature (bullshitting and lounging around). An unusual amount of rain has created an explosion of flowers, quail, and voles. The voles are feeding a lot of other creatures, like owls, coyotes, and snakes. I videotaped four snake species (rubber boa, garter, racer, bull), two of which were in the process of eating voles. I love kids and kids …

Some fish stories are better than others. I used to work with a guy who claimed that he had once caught a fish so big he had to use his boat trailer to get it out of the water. This was after he had asked the skipper of the nuclear sub that had surfaced near him to help tow it to shore. I might have believed him if he hadn't added that part about the submarine. Another guy I used to work with was an immigrant from Vietnam. He embraced America's work ethic with a vengeance. Although he was a …

I have a friend in Seattle (Ballard, to be more exact) who just bought a diesel Jetta. After doing much research on the subject (selectively reading articles that support biodiesel), she had concluded that it was the most ecologically sound vehicle available. She even has a bumper sticker to make sure everyone knows it: "Biodiesel: fuel for the revolution." Had she consulted me before her purchase, I might have convinced her to do otherwise (as I did with another friend who was also considering a Jetta). Biofuels are going to be bad news for the planet's biodiversity. As environmentalists, we …

I own a piece of second-growth forestland that abuts the Tahuya forest in Washington State. It is my contribution to the wildlife conservation effort. I think of it as a small, privately owned nature preserve. By choosing land adjacent to an existing forest I have effectively increased the size of that forest. Not being part of an ecological hotspot, its preservation means far less than that of, say, the Monteverde cloud forest of Costa Rica. Nonetheless, my efforts to protect it over the years have taught me a few things. For example, although it is illegal to do so, brush …