Wildlife Issues

10/17/2024

COP 16:

In addition to top-tier biodiversity targets, the conference will discuss a goal in the agreement to halt human-induced extinction of threatened species and, by 2050, to reduce extinction rates tenfold. The goal also calls for increasing the “abundance of native wild species” to healthy levels.

But conservationists say the goals lack specifics and hope details can be agreed upon at the meeting.

“Many of these other targets need to be nailed down and quantified, like stopping species extinctions,” said Duke University ecologist Stuart Pimm. “At the moment, they are terribly vague.”

Countries will gather next week to assess whether they are close to reaching a global biodiversity goal of protecting 30% of land and water by 2030, known as 30 by 30.

08/12/2024

On World Elephant Day, we at Saving Nature believe in *practical* solutions to help elephants.

We are excited to share a progress update on our highway underpass for elephants in Tanzania, a crucial project aimed at providing safe passage for elephants across a busy roadway.

After some setbacks due to heavy rains and flooding, we are pleased to announce that construction is now complete. Our partner has graded the entryway, added drainage ditches, and installed fencing to keep elephants on the safe path and away from the highway’s dangers.

The initial results are encouraging—elephants have already started using the corridor. However, our work continues. We are now focusing on guiding the elephants with watermelons* to consistently use this route, reducing the risk of them crossing the highway.

Your support has been invaluable in reaching this milestone. We look forward to further protecting these magnificent creatures and their habitats. Thank you for being a vital part of this project. Stay tuned for more updates as we progress!

Learn More

*My friends know that I had a bad encounter with melons in Afghanistan (in 1968), so I am doubly happy when elephants eat this threat to my equanimity.

07/16/2024

Tues Limers

The SCOTUS took months to decide
That presidents need not abide
By national laws
They said just because,
Trump said so and he is their guide.

At a rally Trump said to relax,
Just ignore all his plans and attacks,
And if some of his foes
Are killed the Court knows,
It would be by officialized acts.

07/03/2024

Science lives on transparency. There are those in Florida, who want to deny that.

A powerful nonprofit, closely allied with the Florida governor, sued one of its former scientists for stealing trade secrets. What was it really after?

06/25/2024

Yes, can do many good things at the same time — to help the environment, climate, and countries in debt.

Debt-for-nature swaps on a grand scale could slow climate change and promote economic growth in the Global South.

05/14/2024

This link provides open access to the paper Liz Losos, Alex Pfaff, and I published in Science last week.

Debt distress, biodiversity loss and climate change are interconnected crises for developing countries. A task force of multilateral development banks and environmental institutions is convening a task force to establish a framework to ameliorate these crises by reforming debt-for-nature swaps. The....

05/12/2024

On this Mother's Day baby orangutans need their mums too and the rainforest homes where they live, not cages.

China has “panda diplomacy,” Australia parades koalas at global summits, and now Malaysia plans to join the Asia-Pacific trend for adorable ambassadors, by gifting orangutans to countries that buy its palm oil.

05/10/2024

With colleagues Liz Losos and Alex Pfaff, we have just published a Policy Forum in this week's Science. It's how to reform debt for nature swaps, the original idea of the late Tom Lovejoy to help indebted developing nations get funds to protect their environments.

Debt distress, biodiversity loss and climate change are intertwined crises for developing countries. In a Policy Forum for Science, Duke University experts Elizabeth Losos, Alex Pfaff and Stuart Pimm propose four reforms to debt-for-nature swaps to help countries tackle these daunting challenges.

04/09/2024

I'm suing the Federal Government!

“Incontrovertible scientific evidence points to the massive changes to species on land and in the oceans from our progressively more harmful disruption of the climate caused by the very activities being approved by the Fish and Wildlife Service,” said Stuart Pimm, Ph.D., Doris Duke professor of conservation ecology at Duke University.

WASHINGTON— The Center for Biological Diversity and scientist Stuart Pimm, Ph.D., filed a lawsuit today challenging the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service for failing to comply with the Endangered Species Act in assessing harm to endangered and threatened species from offshore oil and gas activities.

03/06/2024

From Tanzania southward, populations have rebounded, thanks in large part to “buffer” zones that connect more protected areas.

02/26/2024

Detailed conservation priorities for the Northern Andes.

Wil Medina has led this effort to use the approach that Ryan Huang, he, I, and two dozen others across the conservation space to develop detailed species range maps.

Good maps — incorporating expert opinions on where species live, crowd-sourced data (eBird), elevational ranges, and ever changing forest cover — are essential to map out priorities.

The paper is open access.

The ongoing destruction of habitats in the tropics accelerates the current rate of species extinction. Range-restricted species are exceptionally vulnerable, yet we have insufficient knowledge about their protection. Species’ current distributions, range sizes, and protection gaps are crucial to d...

02/21/2024

Against Triage

Science, 2000, DOI: 10.1126/science.289.5488.2289

"All meetings on how to stem the already high and still accelerating loss of species include people who proffer “triage.” “Saving species is a battleground,” goes their argument, “yet resources are finite, there are so many species and so little time. Write off the seriously wounded and concentrate on those we can save.” Although nobody quibbles with the efficient allocation of resources, triage is seductive music to some managers' ears. It combines the semblance of a tough decision-making style with the substance of doing nothing. “It's really too bad about species X, but I can fund more research on species Y” and, sotto voce, “avoid politically difficult choices about X.” Years later, the same argument will be repeated about species Y. Worse, triage inhibits science. Saving the very rarest pushes the technical frontier of conservation biology, for nothing concentrates the mind like impending extinction, nor so openly tests whether our knowledge of ecology, genetics, and behavior is up to the task.

Few have so relentlessly pursued this frontier as Noel and Helen Snyder. And no example has generated more controversy than their years with the California condor. Their beautifully illustrated book is an outstanding case study of whether we know enough science to save the rarest species—and whether decision makers will hear and understand that science."

My thanks to the Snyders and all the others who made it possible for me to add the California Condor to my life list today.