In looking at moth conservation research over the last week, it quickly became clear that we have something of a love-hate relationship with these insects, a relationship that is heavily influenced by whether or not a species is native. As might be expected, native species are often in trouble and non-natives often cause trouble for […]
Archive for the ‘invasive species’ Tag
A complicated relationship with moths
On a downhill slope
As I started looking into the condition of river otters around the world, it became obvious that a lot of the information out there deals with otters in Europe and North America– I would say easily 90% of what I’ve read so far. In some ways that’s helpful, because it means that researchers have been […]
The smell of pesticides in the morning
I had been a little worried that I wasn’t going to be able to find much research concerning the cut-lower industry, or that, if I did, it would all be about developing new varieties of popular flowers. In fact, I was surprised at the extent of the literature- researchers have been paying attention to multiple […]
Removing obstacles for colonial seabirds
Drama on the seas and islands and beaches
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 […]
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 […]
If you give a mouse a conservation program…
As you might expect after looking through my blog posts from this month, I found a pretty distinct dichotomy in terms of conservation programs that deal with rodents: some projects are trying to get rid of them, and others are trying to protect them. Either way, there are a variety of options for us in […]
There goes the neighborhood?
When I started looking into rodent conservation, what I had expected to find was a tail of two species groups: 1) invasive, introduced rodent species dominating the natives, and 2) disappearing native species and simplified ecosystems as a result of habitat loss to human activities. It would appear, however, that the global situation is a […]
Many endangered mice, see how their ranges contract
As I mentioned in my first post of the month, I’m interested in learning about the conservation status of rodent species. I think I may have overlooked the threats facing them because several species (notably the black and Norwegian rats) have been incredibly successful invasive species. When I started looking through the literature, I found […]