What am I trying to illustrate in the above photo (a picture of cattle and elephant dung)? That conservation planning is a pile of poop?
No. But this mixture of excrement does show why such planning needs to incorporate extreme events like drought or flooding – especially for the impacts of those events on local people.
In [...]

Thirteen years ago, The Nature Conservancy teamed up with Fundación Amigos de la Naturaleza, American Electric Power Company, BP America and Pacificorp to buy out four logging concessions adjacent to Bolivia’s Noel Kempff Mercado National Park.
In addition to protecting almost 832,000 hectares of forest habitat and doubling the size of the national park, this purchase [...]

“The forest is our supermarket,” says Bang Liling, the deputy chief of Long Oking village inside the Berau district of Kalimantan, the Indonesian portion of Borneo.
It tells you something that that’s a common phrase heard in this part of the world, which I visited earlier this fall.
“We get all of our medicine from the forest,” [...]

Controversy abounds today: Ecuador institutes a new policy to limit the presence of certain people (poor locals) on the Galapagos, Apple leaves the Chamber of Commerce and concerns are raised about REDD becoming a vehicle for organized crime. Catch up on all the latest news here at Cool Green Morning.

They look like shooting stars, but this [...]

It’s the first of the month, time for a fresh start — like iPhone apps that track climate change, a replacement for coal and dam removal on the Klamath (did you ever think you’d see the day?!). Of course, there’s also disappearing species (the Chinese paddlefish)… well, 4 out of 5 ain’t bad. Read on for today’s [...]

Indigenous Aboriginal ranger Romeo Lane points out an ancient painting of a six-legged goanna lizard to the curious crowd of media and visitors — myself included — that surrounds him.
The painting is just one of thousands that scatter the escarpments of Arnhem Land in the very northern tip of Australia’s vast tropical savanna. This rich cultural [...]

There might not be much hope for the Goose Creek milkvetch, but at least you can now heat your home with an ethanol fireplace. Read on for that and weightier topics like sunspots, the Peruvian Amazon conflict and REDD (one of the most important strategies in fighting climate change, says Conservancy president Mark Tercek).

Goose Creek milkvetch (pictured above) [...]

A couple weeks ago, after another of those planning meetings that take up so much time in the less-glamorous-than-you-might-think world of international conservation, I spent a day in one of the world’s great museums, Mexico City’s National Museum of Anthropology.
A day in a great museum teaches you as much about conservation as a month visiting [...]

Will Steven Colbert try to stop Bill McKibben from saving the world? Will the tenkile — the world’s rarest tree kangaroo — recover from near decimation? Will Kenya and Uganda go to war over a fish? We can’t promise any answers, but we can deliver the top Cool Green News links you should read today.

Bill McKibben [...]

I am guessing that few if any people reading this would picture people when they think about an ecosystem. I know when I think ecosystems, I think plants, animals, rivers, etc., but not people.
Ecosystems are about nature. People aren’t nature, right?
But, by definition, there is nothing that excludes people from being part of an ecosystem. [...]