The Amazon is a rich, beautiful, and magical place. I’ve visited this vast region on several occasions to learn about the indigenous communities who live there and protect it, and to raise awareness of their struggle, as part of the organization I co-founded, REVERB. The indigenous leaders I met told me how deeply they depend […]
Tag: tropical forests
Deforested areas bleed heat to nearby forests, drive local extinctions
Areas cleared of forests bleed heat to neighboring forests, and this fuels increases in temperatures there, new research has found. Average temperatures in forests around the world are already rising because of climate change; this leaked heat exacerbates the problem and accelerates local extinctions of forest-dwelling species. “The warming is happening from global climate change […]
In a predator-infested forest, survival for baby birds comes by the road
More young birds survived near a road through a Thai forest than those living deeper in the forest where more predators lurked, researchers found during a recent study. The disruptive impacts of roads on ecosystems are well-documented, and studies in temperate parts of the planet have shown that fewer fledglings survive to adulthood along the […]
Road building spree hurts Amazon birds
A city-dwelling crow in Japan strategically drops a nut near a crosswalk into moving traffic. The bird then waits patiently for the light to turn before dropping down to the road and collecting the cracked nut in safety. While this type of animal behavior is fascinating, such adaptation to the human world is not possible […]
Ornithologists Map Family Tree of Mysterious Cotinga Birds
Yale University ornithologists Prof Richard Prum and Jacob Berv have mapped out the first large-scale evolutionary family tree for the Neotropical cotingas – some of the brightest, loudest, oddest-looking birds in the world. There are more than 60 species of the cotingas, a highly diverse group of birds that make up the family Cotingidae. They […]
When forests aren’t really forests: the high cost of Chile’s tree plantations
At first glance, the statistics tell a hopeful story: Chile’s forests are expanding. According to Global Forest Watch, overall forest cover changes show approximately 300,000 hectares were gained between 2000 and 2013 in Chile’s central and southern regions. Specifically, 1.4 million hectares of forest cover were gained, while about 1.1 million hectares were lost. On […]
Making movies to save Uganda’s great apes
A new series of films aims to protect Uganda’s great ape species (mountain gorillas and chimpanzees) by bringing entertaining and educational movies to a rural audience living on the edges of Kibale National Park and Bwindi Impenetrable National Park. Produced with heavy input from locals, these films are acted with an all-Ugandan task to teach […]
Bloodsucking flies help scientists identify rare, hard-to-find mammals
Last year scientists released a study that is likely to revolutionize how conservationists track elusive species. Researchers extracted the recently sucked blood of terrestrial leeches in Vietnam’s remote Annamite Mountains and looked at the DNA of what they’d been feeding on: remarkably researchers were able to identify a number of endangered and rarely-seen mammals. In […]
