As you’ve seen in my previous posts, there are some big issues facing boreal forests and the birds that live there both as summer migrants and year-round. These issues include habitat loss and fragmentation, as well as the impacts of climate change. Some researchers have suggested that we need to protect large areas of important […]
Archive for the ‘migration’ Tag
Keeping the boreal forest in tune
A swiftly changing forest
In my last post, I talked about the impacts of forest loss and fragmentation on boreal birds. These issues impact birds whether they are year-round residents or summer visitors, and the impacts can be pretty intense- Sauer et al. (2005) estimated that the boreal chickadee population experienced an annual decline of about 3.6% between 1966 […]
What flies in a northern forest?
In July I had the opportunity to attend the North American Congress on Conservation Biology in Madison, Wisconsin. In addition to having a blast in the cooler weather and meeting researchers doing amazing work, I also was reminded that the boreal forests of the world are huge- in fact, they are much, much bigger than […]
Careful management for moths
In my last post I mentioned that two of the biggest challenges facing native moth populations are unintended targeting by biological control species and habitat fragmentation. With regard to biological control, the remedy is to be as selective with insect-specific controls as we are with other species, and that’s something to be addressed at a […]
Crowded eels
In my last post, I mentioned some of the big issues facing eel populations around the world: habitat fragmentation, overexploitation, climate change. We’re constantly gaining information on how these problems impact eels, and we’re also getting a better sense of how to mitigate some of the challenges. Once again, I’m largely looking at those eel […]
Slipping through the cracks
This past week has been really informative for me- so many things that I didn’t know about eels, and it turns out that I’m not the only one. Although there are a large number of scientists looking into eel conservation, there are still so many unknowns about eel ecology that it can be hard to […]
Where the wild sharks are
My last post presented a pretty bleak view of current shark populations and the challenges they face, so this week I want to focus on the ways that researchers are trying to understand the most important aspects of shark conservation- sometimes the strategies they propose aren’t effective, but still lead to improved shark knowledge and […]
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 […]
This one’s for the birds
Over the last few weeks, I’ve had the chance to look at the status of migratory song birds, some of which are doing quite well (Baltimore orioles, for example: stable population, large range, sports team), while others are facing very bleak conditions (for a sobering experience, check out Golden-cheeked warblers, or, if you want to […]
Lost in Migration
I feel like I’ve spent the last week swimming in a very, very big lake of migration information. I think I may have made my goals for this month a little too broad given the sheer volume of data out there- maybe I should have concentrated on a specific area or genus of birds. Trying […]