Archive by category | Society for Conservation Biology

SCB: Elephant noises

Here’s an update on interesting research trying to a get a handle on the number of forest elephants (Loxodonta cyclotis) in Africa. These animals, which are smaller and thiner-trunked than savannah elephants, live beneath trees, so are harder to count. But they do make noisel—low deep rumbles that travel great distances. Once it was determined that the elephants call at a fairly constant rate, researchers at Cornell began counting the calls to estimate of the number of animals.  Read more

SCB: Babbitt’s Mad

Former US Secretary of the Interior Bruce Babbitt spoke to the SCB last night (he’s flogging a new book). Now “free at last to say what I think” he took the Army Corps of Engineers to task for their plan for restoring the sinking Louisiana coast, which can be found here. To be fair, this plan was completed before Hurricane Katrina, but Babbitt claims that its estimate of how much land will be lost is way off, because it assumes that land-loss rates from the seventies through 2000 will continue in the future.  Read more

SCB: Football and a Flamingo

At this meeting, it is a pure pleasure to hear about some tiny bit of our beleaguered globe in which the environment is improving. In this case, according to Elizabeth Heise of the University of Texas at Brownsville, we have the Texan passion for high school football (the US kind, naturally) to thank.  Read more

SCB: Buzz, Beards and Two Buck Chuck

The opening reception for the SCB featured a whole lot of people doing interesting things, from modeling the date that the mammoths went extinct to fishing in Maine to determine which species of fish’s gills are home to freshwater mussel larvae. There were hints of good sessions to come, particularly one on “Advocacy in Conservation Science”, which will try to answer the question of whether Conservation Biology and its journals should explicitly endorse various policy options (“we should remove Dam X”) or just present the science (If we remove Dam X, this or that will likely happen”). This is interesting stuff. After all, the very name “Conservation Biology” contains an implied bias: things ought to be conserved. In a way, it is unique. One doesn’t hear about a discipline called Let’s Go To Mars Space Science.  Read more

Society for Conservation Biology – First Blog Entry

This year’s assemblage of conservation biologists takes place in San José, California (frequently written without the accent), which lies at the Southern end of San Francisco Bay. It is divided from the Pacific Ocean by a series of hills which stop ocean moisture. So, here it is hot and, from the air, a burnt grass colored landscape surrounds the city. Formerly an agricultural town—its seal features a plump bouquet of wheat—it is now part of Silicon Valley, that famed US home of high tech.  Read more