I recently returned from my near annual pilgrimage to Veracruz, Mexico, to see the fall hawk migration at the biggest hawk migration site in the world.

The area on the Gulf Coast of Mexico near Veracruz City has become well known in recent years for its astounding hawk migration, a phenomenon that has become known as the “Veracruz River of Raptors.”

In a typical year, millions of raptors are counted at the two counting sites just outside of Veracruz City, with the top species being Turkey Vulture, Swainson’s Hawk, Broad-winged Hawk, and Mississippi Kite. In fact, if you are lucky, you can see hundreds of thousands of individual birds pass by in a single day–its hard to top that!

Although the hawk migration is worth a trip to Veracruz in and of itself, the area immediately surrounding Veracruz City has much to offer the visiting naturalist, which is another reason I keep going back:

• Within a few hours’ drive of the city are archaeological sites such as Cempoala and Quiahuiztlan, which provide a look into the historical past of other civilizations as well as good birding. Beaches with gulls, terns and shorebirds are nearby as well as an array of forested habitats.
• To the south, there are savannah habitats where the Double-striped Thick-knee and Lesser Yellow-headed Vulture can be found.
• As you go west and up into the mountains past the state capital of Xalapa, you quickly enter magnificent pine forests with numerous migrants such as Townsend’s Warbler and resident species such as Gray Silky-Flycatcher and Black-headed Siskin.  On our recent Conservancy member tour, we found 226 species of birds in just over a week!

Perhaps the best thing about visiting Veracruz on a tour, however, is that by doing this, you can support the excellent conservation efforts of the conservation group Pronatura Veracruz. In addition to running tours to see the River of Raptors and other great birding areas in the State of Veracruz, Pronatura has implemented a series of excellent conservation projects for wetlands and forests and is responsible for the hawk counting efforts. By taking a tour, you not only get your fill of hawks and other birds, but you directly support conservation efforts in this critically important migratory crossroads of the Americas. Maybe I’ll see you there next year!

(Image: Buteo Magniurostris – Roadside Hawk — taken in in Paso de San Juan, Veracruz-Llava, Mexico. Credit: Reaper Stinky/Flickr through a Creative Commons license.)

This Eastern kingbird looks like he’s contemplating his next move …perhaps a trip to South America for the winter? If you’re a bird fanatic — and who isn’t? — you’ll love this incredible shot by Flicker user naathas, shared through The Nature Conservancy’s Flickr Group.

Check out all The Nature Conservancy’s featured daily nature images, submitted to the Conservancy’s Flickr group by people like you — at my.nature.org.

Feeling unlucky this Friday the 13th? Fortify yourself with the latest in green news — recycled diapers, undersea gliders, a historic comeback and a new way to shut up those global warming skeptics close to you (speaking of superstitious…)

1. So you’re at a family gathering, arguing with Uncle Climate Denier over the reality of climate change — what’s your trump card? How about the huge increase in the ratio of record high temps to record low temps across the United States in the last six decades? Andrew Revkin at Dot Earth says the findings are accepted by scientists across the political spectrum. (I bet Uncle Climate Denier remembers those frozen winter mornings just fine…)
2. Also from Dot Earth — two U.S. senators have proposed giving a prize to anybody with a way to extract CO2 from the atmosphere and sequester it permanently. (Isn’t that called “a forest”? Just asking…)
3. Martha Stewart, eat your heart out — two UK companies are building a plant to recycle diapers into, among other things, wallpaper — and the plant will run on the organic matter in the diapers themselves. Eeewww… (Hat tip: Triple Pundit.)
4. Cool Green Science Alert! A new undersea glider (huh?) is tracking the rare beaked whale off the coast of Hawaii…using only a listening device. (It’s the best way, because the whales are shy and live far off shore. Hat tip: Wired Science.)
5. Score one for the good guys — the brown pelican, once on the endangered species list because DDT weakened its eggs, has been declared “fully recovered” by the U.S. Department of the Interior, reports the LA Times. (Hat tip: Yale Environment 360.)

(Image: Brown pelicans off Morro Bay, California. Credit: mikebaird/Flickr through a Creative Commons license.)

1. Are hybrids more likely to hit pedestrians and bicyclists than other car types, as a new study reports? Treehugger analyzes the data.
2. Andrew Revkin at DotEarth takes a look at the topic of how journalists and scientists can effectively communicate about environmental topics like marine pollution.
3. Did an albatross die so you could eat a tuna sandwich for lunch today? Probably, says Scientific American. A new report says tuna fishing kills an albatross every five minutes.
4. Sure, scientist Stephen Schneider made a mistake back in 1971 when he predicted that aerosol pollution would cause a global cooling effect, but today he’s considered a leading climatologist. Check out this Q&A with him from The New Republic.
5. Thinking about taking a vacation this winter? A new study finds that nature tourism doesn’t necessarily bring more money to the pockets of local people – although the longer the stay, the more benefits for the local economy. 

Ecotourism is often presented as the savior for wildlife and wild places — providing local communities with financial incentives to preserve nature while also reducing poaching and development pressure.

But, lately, others question whether rich Westerners jetting around the world really help much at all: They disturb animals, create demands for new development and only employ local people in low paying jobs.

Some conservationists even consider tourism to be a significant threat to natural areas.

Which view is correct? Is ecotourism a problem, or a solution?

My biases up front: I’d rather travel for the purpose of seeing wildlife and enjoying various outdoor activities than just about anything. My wife has remarked it’s my drug of choice.

That aside, I still think the issue of ecotourism defies easy answers. Problem or solution?

It depends.

Certainly, the ecological havoc wreaked by tourists in places like the Galapagos is well documented. A fragile ecosystem, animals unafraid of humans and an increasing number of cruise ships has been a recipe for disaster.

One doesn’t have to look hard to see tourists behaving badly in nature.

People harass and feed wild bison, leave trash strewn across the Himalayas, demand resorts in places they shouldn’t be — the list is long.

And then there’s the whole carbon footprint issue. We all know that flying has tremendous impacts, so can we really justify flying off to some far-off corner of the world to see animals or scenery?

These are important concerns. Without a doubt, ecotourism can be a threat. But is it always?

After all, would there even be a Galapagos left as we know it if it wasn’t for tourism? Really?

Consider other island ecosystems and how difficult it is to conserve native island wildlife. If it wasn’t for those tour boats, the Galapagos would likely be a highly developed, rat-infested island devoid of wildlife.

Yellowstone may at times be crowded with tourists behaving badly, but would there still be herds of bison and packs of wolves and grizzly bears without those tourists?

The Serengeti faces issues, to be sure, but I don’t think it’s a coincidence that the wildebeest population there continues to migrate, during a period of time when so many other large mammal migrations have disappeared.

Private ranches in places like Brazil’s Pantanal and Namibia still have large populations of wildlife, in part because many ranchers here now attract tourists. It seems naïve to expect that they will keep conserving wildlife if visitors quit showing up.

Ecotourism, ultimately, is a complicated issue. And in that way, it’s not so different from most other conservation issues.

Some conservationists have the tendency to declare activities as simply “good” or “bad” — whether it’s ecotourism, ranching, timber harvest, invasive species, hunting, fire, or agriculture. All have their proponents and detractors.

However, we should make decisions based on the reality of our world, not on utopian fantasies where humans no longer have any impacts on nature.

We can work to make sure that ecotourism is done in appropriate ways that benefit wildlife and local communities.

And as the saying goes, conservationists can’t “let the perfect be the enemy of the good.”

Ecotourism isn’t perfect.

In many cases, though, it’s the best solution we have.

(Photo: Caimans draw tourists to Brazil’s Pantanal. Credit: Matt Miller/TNC.)

It’s that time of year when birds start thinking of heading south for the winter (and New Englanders like me wistfully dream about it). Enjoy this great 3-in-1 shot — bird, reflection and shadow – of a sanderling at the beach in Virginia by Flickr user Dave W.

Check out all The Nature Conservancy’s featured daily nature images, submitted to the Conservancy’s Flickr group by people like you — at my.nature.org.

What’s more frightening than more Americans getting their news from Jon Stewart than a newspaper? When Jon Stewart says putting giant reflective mirrors into space will slow climate change…and he means it! It’s real scary stuff, kids, so we put it last in this morning’s Coolness to give you a good fright for the weekend! (Like you needed one.)

1. Wind turbines get bad press for killing migrating birds, bats…anything that flies. But a new study reported in CleanTechnica says cats and buildings kill far more…and that climate change poses the biggest threat of extinction to bird species. (Those darn outdoor cats…)
2. Were expectations too high for Copenhagen to begin with? A new study in Nature Reports Climate Change says researchers who study cooperation think “trying to get an effective multi-faceted treaty agreed between 192 nations is a waste of time,” reports Climate Feedback. Ouch! (But bilateral deals are a much more effective first step, says the report…and it seems U.S. climate envoy Todd Stern might now agree, reports The Guardian.)
3. Could reducing air pollution speed up global warming? A new report in Science magazine says some aerosols actually have an atmospheric cooling effect…perhaps akin to a giant antiperspirant. (Hat tip: Journal Watch Online.)
4. Nothing is ever easy, is it? Solar farms, it turns out, demand a lot of water for cooling — pitting them smack against water conservation in the perpetually H2O-challenged state of California, says EcoGeek.
5. Jon Stewart endorses geoengineering (you know, like placing reflective mirrors in Earth orbit or seeding clouds) as the most viable solution to climate change, prompted by the arguments of Freakonomics authors Steven Levitt and Steven Dubner. Problem is, Levitt and Dubner are wrong, say a growing number of people. Treehugger reviews the debate.

(Image credit: jpstanley/Flickr through a Creative Commons license.)

Yes, global warming is a big deal and a big challenge. But sometimes I get so frustrated by conservation and environmental NGO’s for not being able to chew gum and walk at the same time — in other words, for failing to appreciate the real lesson of greenhouse gas emissions.

The real lesson is there is no such thing as succeeding at local conservation (and no such thing as protecting your backyard or local community’s natural heritage) without paying attention to global pollution as a whole – of which greenhouse gases are but a few of many.

The National Academy of Sciences has just released a study of global sources of local pollution that is revealing and compelling in its analysis of the long-range transport of pollutants into and out of the United States.

Do you know what’s landing in your backyard? Try ozone, particulate matter, mercury and persistent organic pollutants that have all traveled halfway around the globe from Asia and North Africa, according to the study.

We also give what we receive — the pollution we produce travels to Europe and Canada. There is haze in the Arctic because of particulate matter “imported” from thousands of miles away, and the western United States has experienced several episodes of dust being dumped on it from Asia.

These pollutants are not a vanity or aesthetic issue — they take a huge toll in human health, affecting especially children and other vulnerable portions of our population:

• Ozone is linked to the rate of child admissions to hospitals for asthma.
• The health impacts of particulate matter may account for millions of deaths worldwide per year.
• Organic pollutants impair hormonal, nervous, immune and reproductive systems.
• And perhaps most insidious of all is mercury — which interferes with the developing nervous systems of human fetuses and young infants.

Meanwhile, mercury and organic pollutants can also wreak havoc on wildlife, with well-documented impacts on fish and birds.

What does conservation have to do with this? Simply put, air pollution is the quintessential issue that links ecosystem health and human health and global land use and conservation. For instance:

• Dust storms can result from poorly managed arid lands.
• Organic pollutants are products of unsustainable agriculture.
• The Nature Conservancy’s own analysis of mercury found it to be a major threat to our conservation goals in northeastern United States.

Conservation has historically and consistently neglected pollution. Look at most conservation science textbooks and you will find long sections on invasive species, on deforestation, on greenhouse gas emissions…but almost nothing on pollution. Of course greenhouse gases are now categorized by the EPA as a pollutant — but that was only recently, and most of the public would not think of greenhouse gas as pollution in the same way mercury is.

The Nature Conservancy did publish last year a report on air pollution and wildlife in the eastern United States. But I do not understand the lack of uproar about pollution on the part of the Conservancy and other conservation NGOs. Pollution is the threat to biodiversity and people that can tie us all together in a common cause. If we purchased 90 percent of all the private land in the United States and set it aside for conservation but did not address these global sources of pollution, it would all be for naught.

I am all for focus — with Copenhagen coming up, it is natural that we talk and talk about emissions reductions. But climate change is simply one symptom of a general failure to think clearly about the costs and benefits of our actions in terms of general human well-being and ecosystem health. And climate change is but one of many threats to conservation that can only be dealt with by international agreements.

Let’s hope that negotiations at Copenhagen and beyond that are aimed at reducing greenhouse gases pave the way for future international cooperation regarding a wide variety of global pollutants.

(Image: Air pollution and power lines in China. Credit: AdamCohn/Flickr through a Creative Commons license.)

1. We’ve been talking a lot about the term “green” lately (see yesterday’s blog post), and here’s another green question to ponder (from Green Inc., of course): Do green jobs create greener Americans?
2. Do you know who the world’s top 3 carbon polluters are? The United States and China are pretty obvious, but the The Vine points out that few people know what the third country on the list is. And this third little country makes it all the more important that world leaders come up with an agreement to curb deforestation at Copenhagen.
3. Speaking of keeping forests intact, Ecuador is hoping its plan to stop drilling for oil in the Amazon will get global support before Copenhagen. The plan hinges on countries coming forward to fund Ecuador the money it would have made from the oil.
4. Scientific American showers a little optimism on us this morning: Even if Copenhagen isn’t fruitfull, 2009 has been a year of great progress toward increasing global support and addoption of renewable energy sources.
5. Scientists have a new piece in the puzzle of how birds migrate. A study of European robins found that light-sensing cells in the eyes are responsible for the birds’ ability to find north and migrate – not magnetic-sensing cells in the beak, as hypothesized.

Yes, I’m an avid birder and professional bird conservationist — but that doesn’t mean I don’t take time for other flying things…like hundreds of thousands of bats.

I took a few days off in late August and went down to visit Carlsbad Caverns National Park in southeastern New Mexico, an easy drive for me from my home in Albuquerque. The main reason to go there in late summer and early fall is to see the evening bat flight. Carlsbad Caverns harbors a maternity colony of Mexican free-tailed bats and, in the late summer, the evening flight is especially large since the young bats are out flying and feeding, along with the adults.

Evening bat flights are amazing — something everyone interested in nature should experience. Carlsbad Caverns is certainly not the biggest U.S. bat colony (that distinction belongs to Bracken Cave, Texas, about 20 million bats) nor the most famous (that distinction belongs to the Congress Avenue Bridge in Austin, Texas, about 1.5 million bats), but it is very accessible in a natural setting with some 400,000 bats.  You can watch the show from the bat amphitheater while listening to an informative bat talk from the park rangers and buy bat memorabilia at the souvenir stand.

I had a spectacular visit to the Carlsbad Caverns bat flight: several hundred thousand bats, rainbows, a beautiful sunset over the Chihuahuan Desert, and many interesting birds (Cave Swallow, Canyon Wren, and the Rufous-crowned Sparrow).

It’s truly a multi-sensory experience: you see thousands of bats literally wafting over the desert landscape; hear the wind from their wings (and the bird songs); and smell the aroma of guano from the cave — nothing like it, I guarantee.  There is plenty of other stuff to see there, too. For example, I saw a ring-tailed cat on the drive home after the bat flight. There’s plenty of good birding in the area, especially at the Rattlesnake Springs Picnic Area (which is also partly a Nature Conservancy preserve). And rumor has it there is a large cave system to be visited, too.

(Image: Mexican free-tailed bats flying out of Carlsbad Caverns. Credit: Toika Rover/Flickr through a Creative Commons license.)