Endangered Species
grrlscientist | October 30, 2006Birds, bees, bats, butterflies and other species that pollinate North American plant life are steadily vanishing, according to a study released recently by the National Research Council. This "demonstrably downward" trend could damage dozens of commercially important crops, scientists warned, since three-quarters of all flowering plants depend on pollinators for fertilization.
Domesticated honeybees, which pollinate more than 90 commercial crops in the United States, have declined by 30 percent in the last 20 years. In fact, U.S. farmers had to import honeybees last year for the first time…
grrlscientist | May 11, 2006Today is Endangered Species Day! Thanks to the US Senate, which unanimously passed a resolution on April 6th, today has been designated as national "Endangered Species Day." [animation: Arlington Central School District]
"Endangered Species Day" is an opportunity for schools, libraries, museums, zoos, botanical gardens, agencies, businesses, community groups and conservation organizations to educate the public about the importance of protecting endangered species and to highlight the everyday actions that individuals and groups can take to help protect our nation's wildlife, fish and plants.…
grrlscientist | April 24, 2006
Red knot, Calidris canutus rufus.
This image appears here with the kind permission of the photographer,
Arthur Morris, Birds as Art.
Click image for larger view in its own window.
Ornithologists fear the red knot could go extinct in as few as five years due to overfishing of horseshoe crabs in Delaware Bay, which is the birds' final refueling stop on their 17,000 mile journey to their breeding grounds in the Arctic. Red knots, ruddy turnstones, sanderlings and semipalmated sandpipers all feed on horseshoe crab eggs in the Delaware Bay, and their populations are all experiencing sharp…
grrlscientist | April 6, 2006tags: birds, South Pacific Islands, Philippines, ornithology, new species, conservation, Camiguin, parrot
.
Camiguin Hanging-parrot, or Colasisi, Loriculus camiguinensis,
is newly described and is found only found on the Philippine Island of Camiguin.
This tiny island is especially rich in biodiversity but is increasingly threatened
by logging, agriculture and human settlement.
Click image for much larger view in its own window.
Note: this a live pet.
Photo by Thomas Arndt, Courtesy of The Field Museum of Natural History.
Hey, dear readers, a colleague of mine, Jose Tello, co-discovered a…
grrlscientist | March 20, 2006
The Good News: Not extinct -- YET!
Portrait of the Sumatran Rhinoceros, Didermoceros sumatrensis.
Photo by Alain Compost (WWF-Canon).
For those of you who like to read about endangered species that have somehow managed to survive despite our best efforts to exterminate them, I have some good news! A small but apparently viable population of the Sumatran rhinoceros subspecies, Didermoceros sumatrensis harrissoni, is now confirmed to exist in the northeast state of Sabah on the island of Borneo.
The Sumatran rhino is comprised of several subspecies that are thought to be extinct throughout…
grrlscientist | February 7, 2006
Male Berlepsch's Six-wired Bird of Paradise, Parotia berlepschi.
Photo by Bruce Beehler.
Click image for larger version in its own window.
I would give anything -- in fact, I'd give absolutely everything I ever had, currently have and could ever hope to have -- to be part of the recent Conservation International (CI) expedition to Indonesia. This month-long expedition was the brain child of scientist and CI vice president, Bruce Beehler. His goal? To explore the mysterious Foja Mountains in western New Guinea, formerly known as Irian Jaya.
Beehler gathered a team of 25 international…
grrlscientist | January 23, 2006
Ornithologist and Ivory-billed Woodpecker expert, Dr. Jerome Jackson, who has an impressive list of professional accomplishments, including the excellent book, In Search of the Ivory-billed Woodpecker Amazon (2004), has finally spoken out about the rediscovery of the IBWO in a peer-reviewed paper [free PDF] that was recently published in one of the most respected ornithological journals in the world, The Auk.
In this 15-page paper, Jackson asserts that the evidence put forward by the search party participants simply doesn't rise to the level of scientifically valid "proof" as portrayed by…