Animal Behavior Climate Change Environment

Termites actively help save soils during droughts, study finds

Author: Shreya Dasgupta Researchers studying the effects of termites in an old-growth tropical forest in Malaysian Borneo found that both termite numbers and activity increased during the El Niño drought of 2015-2016, resulting in higher leaf litter decomposition and soil moisture compared to a test plot where the termite population had been artificially suppressed. These improvements […]

Conservation Spotlight Indigenous Communities Wildlife Conservation

Engaging communities to protect orangutans: Interview with Liana Chua

Author: James Fair Conservation efforts have traditionally focused too much on wildlife and not enough on human communities, says social anthropologist Liana Chua. When it comes to orangutans, Chua says indigenous communities in Borneo are unlikely to share the concerns and priorities of international conservation organizations. Killing of orangutans by humans is a major threat to […]

Climate Change Ethics Poverty

An Indian perspective on the Poland climate meeting: Not much help for the world’s poor and vulnerable

Top Photo: Bamboo structures on the Brahmaputra river in Majuli, northeastern India, intended to help prevent land erosion in a region experiencing erratic weather patterns and bursts of intense rainfall. AP Photo/Anupam Nath Author: Arun Agrawal, University of Michigan The international climate change conference that concluded in Katowice, Poland on Dec. 15 had limited ambitions and expectations […]

Conservation Spotlight Wildlife Conservation Wildlife Rehabilitation

We train Colombian woolly monkeys to be wild again – and maybe save them from extinction

Woolly monkeys are hard to miss in Colombia’s jungles. Now, they face extinction. Top Photo Credit: Mónica Ramírez Authors: Mónica Alejandra Ramírez, Universidad de los Andes ; Manuel Lequerica Tamara, University of Sydney, and Pablo Stevenson, Universidad de los Andes Colombia’s Andes Mountains used to be loaded with wildlife, including South America’s sole bear species, […]

Climate Change Environment

Climate change linked to specific 2017 extreme weather events

This article originally appeared at Mongabay.com and is republished here under CC BY-ND 4.0 license. According to the seventh annual special report by the Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society (BAMS) probing the causal links between rising global temperatures and extreme weather events, issued last month, climate change made the Northern Great Plains drought of 2017 some […]