Save the krill!

Posted on By David Shiffman 5 Comments on Save the krill!
Conservation, Science

The conservation movement is full of organizations whose stated goal is to protect  specific organisms (i.e. “save the whales” or “save the sea turtles”) or to protect certain ecosystems (i.e. “save the rain forest” or “save the coral reef”). While these groups do admirable work, I can’t help put notice that they primarily focus on charismatic, likable organisms and ecosystems that are considered beautiful. The reason for this is simple- it’s easier to get the public to support conserving these things.  Any conservation is a good thing, but when we focus exclusively on what we like instead of what’s important to the environment, it can lead to ecological disaster. That’s why I was so excited to learn of the existence of the “save the krill” movement.

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Finding Melville’s Whale: The Lee Shore (Chapter 23)

Posted on By Andrew Thaler
Uncategorized

Chapter 23 of Herman Melville’s classic – Moby Dick. Read along with us and discuss this chapter or the book as a whole in the comments. Visit this page for the complete collection to date: Finding Melville’s Whale. The Lee Shore Bulkington, this book is his epitaph. A man so driven that he spent no more … Read More “Finding Melville’s Whale: The Lee Shore (Chapter 23)” »

Wait, stop – we have an Avatar tree too!

Posted on By Amy Freitag 2 Comments on Wait, stop – we have an Avatar tree too!
Conservation

Remember how that Na'avi needed their tree of souls? Well, it might not be as obvious to us, but we depend on our forests too.

Dependence on natural resources is often relegated to a characteristic of the rural poor, a reason for development aid to swoop in and provide other economic opportunities. However, a recent article by Guo, Zhang, and Li in PLoS ONE has demonstrated that more developed countries actually have a higher dependence on ecosystem services. Basically, we may fire up our stoves with gas from eons ago rather than wood, but we’re even more dependent on that tree in the yard. We all laughed at the “primitive”, romanticized blue natives in Avatar, but their culture really wasn’t that different than ours.

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