Articles by Biodiversivist

Brown gets down

Discovery News tells us that a biofuel crisis is looming. Lester Brown is concerned that two billion (about a third of the way across this window) desperately poor people may soon find their food in our gas tanks:

Burning through the wood

Pardon my prolonged absence. I've been sleeping in a tent for the past five days. I wrote a piece about this annual event last year, so rather than rehash the adventure, you can go here and read about it. The only thing different this year were the lightning storms that set off a forest fire. Helicopters were lifting water to fight it from a nearby lake.

I have also been busy finishing up a set of house plans for a two-story addition. My client wanted to use structural integrated panels (SIPS) for the exterior walls and roof because they have twice as much insulation as a conventional 2 x 6 wall and use half as much framing lumber. The idea was that by using these panels, along with engineered lumber (PDF) for the beams, posts, and floor joists, we would save energy and trees at the same time. But, like everyone else, my client also wanted lots of big windows, a cathedral ceiling, views, and cavernous space.

Show me the monkey

An AP article titled "Leaders Want Biodiversity Pay Off" tells us about a five-day conference put together by Conservation International where more than 400 delegates will kick around ideas for using their rich biodiversity to boost local economies. Until the advent of carbon trading, the only real option for doing that was ecotourism. The two ideas can now be combined and may one day prove to be a powerful combination. Forest that is locked away in a legally binding contract to soak up carbon for a century or so may as well be used as an ecotourism destination.

Good things are happening. The president of Madagascar intends to add 23,000 square miles of protected territory by 2008. Equatorial Guinea announced plans to create 1.2 million acres of new national forest along with a $15 million conservation trust fund to manage it. Jumping on the bandwagon, the president of Liberia announced that she is going to create a $30 million conservation trust fund to finance the creation and maintenance of new protected areas as well.

[update]Following is the text of an e-mail I just received. Here you go, Alphonse and good luck:

I was delighted to see your post on Grist Mill titled "Show Me The Monkey" about the Conservation International Global Symposium titled Defying Nature's End: The African Context. I am currently at that event which looks likely to produce a substantive "compact" on how to tie conservation to economic and human development. We are posting news from the conference hourly on the symposium's website http://symposium2006.conservation.org/ and are providing information for the public on our own home page http://www.conservation.org/ It would be wonderful if you could add these links to your article Thanks Alphonse Alphonse L. MacDonald Senior Director Online Communications Conservation International

Catch and release program for fossil rats

According to this MSNBC story, these creatures were thought to be extinct for 11 million years. Researchers learned of their existence last year from dead specimens found in local meat markets (the food kind). They released it back into the wild after taking photos. In the old days, researchers would have shot and stuffed it. An increasing awareness of the plight of our biodiversity is catching on. Catch and release fishing is a common practice now, although there will always be people who don't give a rat's ass.