Archive for the ‘conservation’ Tag

Endangered species in our CITES

It’s always nice to take a break from the usual routine- a small diversion can provide amusement, a new viewpoint, or just a chance to try something new. This month, I’ve decided to step away from the usual format and go with four posts which provide mainly information about three different elements of one larger […]

Getting your hands wet

Many of the salt marsh and barrier island restoration projects I’ve described in previous posts are pretty big scale- it would be challenging for an individual to plan and carry out offshore dredging or large-scale marsh terrace construction. But is there a way to contribute in some small fashion to these bigger projects? Given how […]

Waiting for time and tide

In my last post I described some of the techniques used in salt marsh and barrier island restoration, a pretty important topic here in Louisiana where we wait for the wave of each new storm to break, but it’s also important in many other areas around the world, especially since a large percentage of the […]

A messy topic

Where I am in Louisiana, when it rains there are standing puddles for a few days- the terrain is pretty flat and a short drive will take me to the coast. Consequently, flooding from extreme weather (such as hurricanes) is always a concern. At the same time this is a very productive environment- we’re currently […]

Giving frogs a leg up

In some ways, the picture of amphibian survival I’ve painted over the past few weeks is pretty grim: we know that species are disappearing around the world, in some cases faster than we can identify them; we know that disease is playing a role, as well as pollution and a changing climate; and we know […]

Silence (and raspy-ness) will fall

I have to say that frog researchers are doing, and have done, some pretty amazing things to learn more about the big issues facing amphibians and how we can improve their chances. (It would never have occurred to me that you could track frogs.) And their results are helping us better understand not only the […]

Posted February 17, 2013 by Mirka Zapletal in Amphibians

Tagged with , , , ,

Building a better dingo house

Over the past few weeks, we’ve seen that dingoes play a variety of roles in the environment, and the extent and importance of those roles is hotly debated by researchers. Dingoes may help native wildlife by keeping exotic predator numbers down, but they may also prey upon threatened species in Australia. Dingoes are apex predators […]

Keeping up with the pack

Dingoes seem to be pretty controversial animals, and I think I even found about as close as you’ll get to a fight in the scientific community over the ecological roles of the dingo (what was fascinating about the exchange was not just what was said, but how it was said- scientists can be mean). A […]

It’s a dog’s life

This week I’d like to give you an introduction to the history and ecology of the dingo (Canis lupus dingo), but I’m not sure how thorough I can be here- one of the things that struck me in my reading was how many opinions there are about dingoes. And people with differing conclusions seem to […]

Going to the dogs

I’ve spent the last few days going back and forth in my mind about this month’s topic. I am fascinated by canids (and quite amazed, when I look at my dog, to think of her progenitors), and there are so many species to choose from- I wanted a topic that was outside of North America […]

Posted December 1, 2012 by Mirka Zapletal in Carnivores

Tagged with , , , ,