When I chose hermit crabs as my topic for this month, I wasn’t exactly sure what I would find. It turns out that hermit populations are generally in good shape at this moment [although the popularity of hermit crabs in the aquarium industry does warrant a little concern- because of the effort and expense needed […]
Author Archive
Not upwardly-mobile?
Any safe haven?
Over the past month, I’ve packed up my belongings and then unpacked them again as I moved between apartments. That got me thinking about animals that travel with their ‘house’, and so my topic for this month’s posts is hermit crabs. This is a topic that is pretty well unknown to me. During a […]
Getting our hands dirty
Although some plant species are doing very well around the world (sometimes to the point of becoming invasive), other species are losing ground. In some cases there are focused recovery plans, but oftentimes the issue of habitat loss trumps our best efforts to sustain these populations. So how can we contribute to both habitat availability […]
How does an endangered plant garden grow?
In my last post, I talked about some of the challenges facing endangered plant species as crucial elements of the ecosystems they inhabit, such as regular fires or insect pollinators, were lost. This may very well be the tip of the iceberg when you consider that imbalances within ecosystems can also result from too much […]
No plant is an island
When I started looking at the literature on endangered plants, it seemed that many of the issues being faced by these species could be summed up by four main problems: Invasive species outcompeting and/or altering the habitat Loss of habitat through development (and this has particularly hit species with already small ranges- Leavenworthia torulosa, for […]
Seeing green?
I was brain-storming ideas for blog topics and I thought it had been a while since talking about terrestrial plant conservation issues- given the importance of these primary producers in sustaining so many of the environments we depend upon, we should probably be paying attention to their conservation. But every plant issue I could think […]
Turbo-charging tortoise conservation
In my last post, I wrote about information gathered by researchers which was helping support tortoise populations and make conservation efforts more effective, but there is still a lot to be done for tortoises around the world. There are a variety of ways that we can each contribute to tortoise (and turtle) protection, whether from […]
Slow and steady wins the race?
In my last post, I recounted some of the issues facing tortoises around the world: habitat loss, habitat degradation, disease, hunting, etc. Some of these problems have been impacting tortoises for a long time, while others are more recent in nature. The good news is that concerned individuals have been working to support tortoise populations […]
Life in the slow lane
In some ways tortoises represent an old conservation issue- as early as the 1800s, for example, people were concerned about overharvesting of giant tortoises on islands such as the Galapagos and Seychelles. Because they can be easy to approach (one study I read used the term ‘run’ with a special citation because none of these […]
A little slow on the uptake
A few days ago I was at a friend’s house watching his little brother hold a small tortoise (2 years old but small enough to fit in the palm of his hand). I realized that, as much as I am fascinated by tortoises and find the majority of them incredibly cute, I know very little […]