Good Book on Ecological Restoration

Restoring Ecological Health to Your Land by Steven I. Apfelbaum and Alan Haney

Here is a great book for practitioners of ecological restoration and budding restorationists.

Restoring Ecological Health to Your Land is the first practical guidebook to give restorationists and would-be restorationists with little or no scientific training or background the “how to” information and knowledge they need to plan and implement ecological restoration activities. The book gives step-by-step process for developing, implementing, monitoring, restoration projects. Steeped in land ethic and solid ecology, this volume spells out the route for restoration, from initial concept to planning, implementation, and long-term management. Great book.

Steven I. Apfelbaum is chairman of Applied Ecological Services Inc., a company he founded in 1975. He has worked on design, construction, management, monitoring, and research of ecosystems and has taught ecosystem restoration to land trusts, conservation organizations, and families interested in restoring their property.

Alan Haney is a forest ecologist and emeritus professor of forestry and former dean of the College of Natural Resources, University of Wisconsin–Stevens Point. His research and teaching focus on ecosystem structure and function, including restoration ecology.

Published: 05/11/2010
Publisher: Island Press

The Science and Practice of Ecological Restoration Series
ISBN: 9781597265713

Hardcover: $60.00

Family Ties in Lizards

Researchers at the University of California, Santa Cruz, have found that desert night lizards in the Mojave Desert lives in family groups and shows patterns of social behavior more commonly associated with mammals and birds. These lizards are viviparous, giving birth to live young instead of laying eggs. According to researchers it is this viviparity that predisposes the animal to form family groups.

Usually individuals in most species of lizards avoid each other. Young desert night lizards stay with their mother, father, and siblings for several years after birth.

Details of the research appears in the latest issue of the Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences

Stopping Illegal Wildlife Trade - Good News from UK

It is always good news for conservationists, when they hear about arrest and punishment of poachers and smugglers of wildlife and wildlife artifacts. Here comes a good piece of info from UK.

Due to the diligent efforts of UK authorities, Donald Allison, of Preston, Lancashire, an antiques dealer, who tried to smuggle rhino horns out of Manchester Airport has been jailed for 12 months. He had hidden the two horns in a sculpture as he tried to board a flight to China. The worth of horns is estimated to be around £600,000. They were destined for Chinese medicine market.

The investigators used DNA samples to trace the horns to the rhino Simba, which died from natural causes at the Essex zoo in 2009. The rhino's entire head was stolen and sold for £400 after its body was sent for statutory disposal.

Simba was a white rhinoceros from southern Africa, an animal protected under the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species (Cites). The convention stipulates that the bodies of protected species should be incinerated after death.

Preventing the horns being sold on to the illegal world market is vital to the long term conservation of endangered species. UK authorities have acted with alacrity. Tahr country salutes the officials.

Pictures of New Ocean Species Discovered

A census of marine life has been completed with maps and three books, increasing the number of counted and validated species to 201,206. The 10 year effort involved 2,700 scientists. According to the scientists there may be at least another 750,000 still waiting to be discovered. Telegraph has published 29 beautiful images of newly discovered species.  Click here to view it.

Biodiversity Underpins not only Ecosystems, but Medicine

 I read with great interest and interview of Dr. Christopher N. Herndon, Published by Mongabay. Dr Herndon stresses the importance of biodiversity in terms of medicine in this well paced interview.

The ecosystems such as rainforests and coral reefs that have given us some of the world’s most important drugs are also among the most endangered. Ocean acidification and warming temperatures connected to climate change may spell doom for coral reefs. Rainforests continue to vanish at an estimated rate of 32,300 hectares every day. Tropical rainforests forests are found only 6% of the earth's land surface but they contain over half of its terrestrial biodiversity.

Dr Herndon says  it's truly difficult to know how many species have been tested for medicinal properties, or for that matter how many have already been lost forever. Less than one percent of all species has been fully examined for medical potential. Most of nature's medicine is stored among plants, fungi, and invertebrates.

There is an urgent need to protect our biodiversity. Read the full interview here