Over the last week I’ve gotten something of an around-the-world tour of seabird conservation- some of the papers have been reviews, which means that they combine information from as many studies as they can and provide a broad view of trends, while others were targeted at specific species. No matter which way you look at […]
Archive for the ‘conservation’ Tag
Drama on the seas and islands and beaches
Danger in numbers?
As we start 2016, I’m trying to be more conscious of conservation issues that I interact with on a regular basis but might not really spend a lot of time contemplating in detail. For example, I know that carbon dioxide emissions are a major cause of global warming, so I try to turn off lights […]
Along came a spider conservation program…
In my previous post I said I was going to look into ways to get involved in spider conservation- I’ve done that, and there are definitely ways to get involved, but not in the same numbers that I usually see with other conservation topics. My guess is that spider conservation is both relatively new and […]
Creating a safety net for spiders
As I mentioned in my last post, we are still very much in the beginning stages of understanding spider conservation. At this point, it may be that we can really only speak to general trends, rather than specific conservation situations, but certainly we’ve got a starting point. Spiders are particularly sensitive to vegetative structure, meaning […]
Tracing the thread
When I started looking into spider conservation, I wasn’t sure how much information I would find, but I assumed that there was a growing body of literature. And that is accurate, although I was surprised to see how much of it was about the impact of land management practices on spider communities in general. There […]
A tangled web?
For people who know me, this month’s topic may come as something of a surprise- I am not good with spiders, I do not like them close to me, I get creeped out watching them move. But I’m also trying to be open-minded when it comes to conservation concerns- just because I don’t personally like […]
Nuts for Squirrels
When I started looking into opportunities to get involved with squirrel conservation, I expected to see many efforts that focus on the European Red Squirrel in the UK and Ireland- and my expectations were more than met. In fact, I had to do a little digging to find groups that even mentioned other squirrel species, […]
Building a better squirrel conservation program
In my last post, I provided a long (and depressing) list of squirrel species and subspecies facing challenging situations. The very good news is that there are quite a few people conducting research to better understand exactly why certain populations are in decline and how to most effectively reverse those trends. Not all of their […]
The many faces of Prof. Squirrel
When I said last week that I was interested in squirrel conservation, I had imagined that I would find a lot of papers talking about the decline of European red squirrels (Sciurus vulgaris) in response to the presence of gray squirrels in the UK- and, I did. But I also found so much more: more […]
What ever happened to Squirrel Nutkin?
Last week I read a news story about an investigation launched by police after a squirrel was shot in Scotland- the issue here is not just that a squirrel was shot, but that a red squirrel was shot. In the UK, red squirrels are a protected species and various organizations are engaged in trying to […]