1. Are jellyfish taking over our oceans? (Nature)
2. Turning down the thermostat saves energy and helps you lose weight. (The Chic Ecologist)
3. Atlantic sturgeon added to the endangered species list. (Huffington Post)
4. How do you fight invasive species in Australia? Bring in Komodo dragons. (TreeHugger)
5. Spider webs may hold the clue to better buildings. (Christian Science Monitor)

1. Invasive Burmese pythons eat their way through Florida’s Everglades. (National Geographic)
2. If you’re looking for a new car, consider a folding microcar! (TreeHugger)
3. Umm… is that a UFO at the bottom of the Baltic Sea? (Huffington Post)
4. Egypt remains one of Africa’s largest markets for illegal ivory items. (WWF)
5. Pop quiz: what caused the mysterious Little Ice Age? (Mother Nature Network)

1. Asia’s demand for pangolin meat shows up online. (Mongabay)
2. Sumatran elephants could be extinct in less than 30 years. (WWF)
3. Mercury pollution isn’t just for fish eaters in the Northeast anymore, a new study finds. (New York Times)
4. What are the most threatening invasive species in the North America? (Huffington Post Green)
5. Groundbreaking magnetic soap may help clean up oil spills. (BBC)

1. Cool or terrifying?  Scientists have found humongous (like, 100-lb+) catfish swimming in a French river.  (Conservation Magazine)
2. Banning hybrid vehicles from carpool lanes slows everyone down, says a new report.  (Green)
3. The state of Vermont plans to get 90% of its energy from renewable sources by 2050.  (EcoGeek)
4. But!  If the entire country started seriously deploying wind and solar to scale right now, the whole place could run on clean energy by 2026.  (Treehugger)
5. The “War on Terror” may have helped keep terrorists out of the US, but it for sure welcomed invasive species right on in.  (Grist)

1. Recent measurements show the Gulf dead zone is smaller than expected–so why aren’t researchers rejoicing? (Green)
2. Endangered leatherback turtles range wider than previously thought. (YaleE360)
3. Does conservation make a difference in saving biodiversity? (BBC)
4. Officials head out on a 4-day expedition in search of Asian carp. (The Christian Science Monitor)
5. What will Glacier National Park be like without the glaciers? By 2020 we’ll know the answer. (Grist)

Is nature really “fragile”? Is environmentalism too much like a religion? Should conservation embrace GMOs and technology? Are many of conservation’s heroes actually worth our admiration?

Watch the video above to see Nature Conservancy Chief Scientist Peter Kareiva puncture some of the most cherished green myths around in this late May talk to the Long Now Foundation in San Francisco.

(The talk expresses Peter Kareiva’s views and not necessarily the positions of The Nature Conservancy. The talk begins right after the short, weird animated film. To watch the entire talk and Q&A session, click on the WATCH FULL PROGRAM button in the lower right of the player.)

1. Stop making excuses and ride your bike to work already.  (Treehugger)
2. California fights invasive light-brown apple moths with native stinger-less wasps.  (Los Angeles Times)
3. London’s poor air quality may leave a dark cloud over next summer’s Olympic Games.  (Huffington Post)
4. This invasive plant is cropping up all over New York– and beware, it can cause blisters, scarring and even blindness.  (Associated Press, via Christian Science Monitor)
5. The Bahamas bans shark fishing.  (Green)

I used to feel like an underachiever on the Fourth of July.

Somehow my day of parade going, book reading, pool splashing, burger grilling and fireworks watching felt kind of, well, frivolous in the face of the eighteenth-century achievements of people like George Washington, John Adams, Thomas Jefferson and – one of my own personal heroes – Benjamin Franklin: author, inventor, scientist, civic leader and statesman. A great man and a great thinker.

But we all make mistakes…even Ben Franklin.

In 1772, Franklin brought to the colonies an ornamental tree with colorful autumn foliage that could grow in full sunlight or shade, withstand flooding or drought and produce wax-like berries used for making candles, soap and fuel. That same year, he wrote to Dr. Noble Wimberly Jones in Georgia:

“I send also a few seeds of the Chinese Tallow Tree, which will I believe grow & thrive with you. ‘Tis a most useful plant.”

Today, Chinese Tallow, also known as the popcorn tree has spread from South Carolina to Florida, and has wound its way west across the Gulf states to Texas. It is changing the southeastern U.S. coastal plain, crowding out native plants such as wax myrtle, American holly and cherry laurel.

On Ossabaw Island, off the coast of Savannah, marine scientist Amanda Wrona Meadows sees the habitat changing before her very eyes.

“Chinese tallow is a quick-spreading and fast-growing alien species that is choking out freshwater wetlands and replacing more favorable native plants in sand dunes and maritime forests,” said Dr. Wrona Meadows. “It is harming very critical habitat for the marine critters that we have come to know and love, like painted buntings, alligators, great blue herons, and federally endangered wood storks.”

During a visit to the island for some tallow removal, I could see the path of the trees’ growth marching across the wetlands. It doesn’t take much to imagine how tallow could change what we find in our coastal forests, wetlands, and sand dunes.

“Small tallow seeds will sit – very patiently – in the canopy of the forest, waiting for that one spot of sunlight that they need to really spurt their growth,” continued Dr. Wrona Meadows. “And once that canopy opens up and they find an opportunity to grow, they will do so very rapidly, robbing the native trees of sunlight, nutrients and water.”

What can we do to stop the spread of invasive species including Chinese tallow?

• DO educate yourself, friends and neighbors about invasive, non-native species. Learn how to identify them and how to remove them.
• DO encourage your local gardening stores to carry native plants and use them for your landscaping.  Get your local garden club to help!
• DO remove them from your property. Seedlings should be continually pulled by hand before they reach seed-bearing maturity. When the leaves start to change color in the fall, larger trees should be cut to the ground and treated with herbicides. Re-treatment may be necessary.
• DO plant native or noninvasive non-native trees in areas previously occupied by Chinese tallow. Tree species recommended that are similar in size to Chinese tallow include blackgum, maples, dogwood, and crape myrtles.
• DO take care when buying products made from invasive species. For example, some wreaths are made of Chinese tallow; if you toss it into your backyard after the holidays, the berries on the wreath will sprout! Better yet, buy decorations made from native plants.
• DO support your local conservation, State and Federal government organizations who are working hard to eradicate invasive species.

This Fourth, if you spot an invasive plant during a backyard barbeque, go easy on Ben Franklin. As he said, “Do not fear mistakes. You will know failure. Continue to reach out.”

Let’s amend that to “reach out…and yank it out.”

Kerry Crisley is associate director of strategic communications with an emphasis on marine work.

(Image: The Benjamin Franklin National Memorial inside the Franklin Institute in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Image credit: MikeParker/Flickr via a Creative Commons License)

A famous person once observed that the signature of a civilized mind is the ability to hold two seemingly contradictory ideas in one’s head at the same time. This is exactly what conservation must learn to do when it comes to introduced (or what we often call “non-native” or “invasive”) species.

1. Conservation orthodoxy has it that non-native species are evil or at least highly undesirable, and that we conservationists need to do everything we can to eliminate, prevent and control any and all non-native plants and animals. Up until a few years ago, The Nature Conservancy had an entire global team specifically addressing the problem of invasive species. Today, the Conservancy’s policy team seeks regulations and trade agreements that will reduce the flow of exotic species to new lands and waters.
2. Pointing in the opposite direction, an essay appearing this week in the journal Nature — and co-authored by several of the world’s premier ecologists — argues that we should assess organisms on their environmental impact rather than on whether or not they are native. (Did you know that the common pheasant — image above — was an introduced species to North America from Asia in 1857?)

These two views are not as contradictory as the media will portray them — but no one has recently accused the media of having a civilized mind.

Start holding these ideas together in your head:

1.     Non-native species can have devastating impacts, especially on islands. Exotic pests (such as the emerald ash borer) and plant pathogens cause enormous economic damage. Some plant invaders totally remake ecosystems — altering fire regime, nutrient cycling, productivity and resident animals. Some introduced animals have devastated fish, bird and lizard diversity.

2.     But non-native plants can also provide habitat for endangered species, and when landscapes have been trashed, exotic trees with rapid growth can be the best bet for erosion and mudslide control.

3.     Trade restrictions and border inspections substantially (and relatively cost-effectively) reduce the flood of non-native pests, and some eradication programs have succeeded. For example, on Santa Cruz Island (off the coast of southern California), the Conservancy has eliminated pigs and in the process greatly enhanced the prospects for the highly endangered island fox.

4.     But millions of dollars have been spent by federal agencies to control certain invasive species that have no measurable impacts on biodiversity or ecosystem function, and that in the end are not even reduced by the investment — in other words, lots of money has been wasted.

5.     It is important to protect ecosystems from certain invaders that could radically change the communities and overwhelm native species.

6.     But we must admit that novel ecosystems are increasingly common and these may contain non-native species that will have to be treated as “part of the ecosystem” going forward.

Some of my colleagues in conservation will label the Nature article by Mark Davis and eighteen other ecologists  “dangerous” or “destructive” because it puts forth the even-numbered ideas above. It will be interpreted as undermining existing programs to prevent or control invasive species. I do not view it that way. I see it as a provocative essay intended to make us think about how we invest our limited conservation energy and funds.

Science-based conservation cannot be about knee-jerk platitudes and simple views of good and evil. Policy experts and conservationists who have been working hard to control invasive species should not discourage arguments about invasive species — the fact is we cannot control all invasive species, and in many cases, yesterday’s invaders have become plants and animals that are beloved by local people. The concept of “nativeness” did not even really appear in the literature until the mid-19th century, the construct of the British botanists John Henslow and (later) Hewitt (H.C.) Watson.

We — both in the Conservancy and in the broader conservation world — need to take seriously the challenges issued by Mark Davis and his colleagues, and think about what they mean for where we invest our money. Triage is an act of responsibility, not surrender. I am confident that The Nature Conservancy’s investment in eradicating pigs from Santa Cruz Island was smart. I am equally confident that polices restricting the flow of non-native plants into the country could reduce future economic damage from non-native insects and pathogens. But I have also seen money spent on futile invasive control programs or on targeting non-natives that are relatively inconsequential.

I once co-authored a paper about non-native species entitled “Reducing the risks of nonindigenous species introductions: Guilty until proven innocent.” Upon reading the article by Mark Davis, I would amend that title with: “Guilty, but take into account special circumstances when sentencing.”

(Image: Common or Ring-necked pheasant. Image credit: matt knoth/Flicker through a Creative Commons license.)

What looks like a desert, but is full of water — enough to slake the thirst of Bogotá, Colombia? Watch this Nature Brains EcoRiddle video and find out from our scientist Tomas Walschburger about an astonishing habitat that is now being threatened by the effects of climate change.