conservation – The News Desk

Why Scientists Are Bugging the Rainforest

17Oct

By adminNo Comments

Technology

Why Scientists Are Bugging the Rainforest

Bioacoustics can’t fully replace ecology fieldwork, but can provide reams of data that would be extremely expensive to collect by merely sending scientists to remote areas for long stretches of time. With bioacoustic instruments, researchers must return to collect the data and swap batteries, but otherwise the technology can work uninterrupted for years. “Scaling sampling from 10, 100, [or] 1,000 sound recorders is much easier than training 10, 100, 1,000 people to go to a forest at the same time,” says Donoso.“The need for this kind of rigorous assessment is enormous. It will never be cost-effective to have a kind of boots-on-the-ground approach,” agrees Eddie Game, the Nature Conservancy’s lead scientist and director of conservation for the Asia Pacific region, who wasn’t involved in th...

Atlantis Dubai extends 1 USD conservation programme for another year – Business Traveller

11Oct

By adminNo Comments

Travel

Atlantis Dubai extends 1 USD conservation programme for another year – Business Traveller

Atlantis Dubai has selected nine local and international conservation and sustainability projects to receive funding from its Atlantis Atlas Project 1 USD initiative. From June 2022 to May 2023, for every marine animal experience participated in by a guest, Atlantis Dubai contributed US$1, resulting in a US$140,000 fund. In the programme’s first year, Atlantis contributed US$120,000 of funding, and since launching in June 2021, the 1 USD contribution initiative has raised over a quarter of a million dollars. Since April, organisations around the world were invited to apply for funding, after which proposals were solicited and assessed by the internal Atlantis Conservation and Science Committee. Atlantis Atlas Project currently focuses on four key groups of wildlife; sharks, rays, dolphin...

Congress Considers Tribal Buffalo Restoration Support

23Sep

By adminNo Comments

Politics

Congress Considers Tribal Buffalo Restoration Support

A bipartisan bill proposed Friday would require the Interior Department to create a permanent program to support tribal governments’ ongoing efforts to reestablish wild bison herds. Proposed by Sens. Martin Heinrich (D-N.M.) and Markwayne Mullin (R-Oka.), the bill would mark a major step toward confronting one of America’s most glaring wildlife conservation failures. The program would allocate $14 million annually toward efforts to shuttle wild buffalo from federal public land to tribal reservations. It would also offer grants and technical assistance to help tribal efforts to expand buffalo habitat. “The bison has been a critical part of our culture for many generations, in New Mexico, across the West, and especially in Indian Country,” Heinrich said in a statement. “The growth of Tribal...

Wild Donkeys Are on the Vanguard of Ukraine’s Ecological Recovery

23Jul

By adminNo Comments

Technology

Wild Donkeys Are on the Vanguard of Ukraine’s Ecological Recovery

The war, unsurprisingly, has made conservation a lot harder. Oleg Dyakov, a rewilding officer from Rewilding Ukraine’s head office in Odesa and one of the organization’s cofounders, recounts the hazards his teams have faced with a casual frustration. Marine mines drifting in from the Black Sea stalled the release of fallow deer, and monitoring activities of Dalmatian Pelicans were limited to binoculars and telescopes because parts of the Delta were restricted by the Ukrainian government. (In peacetime, they’d have been able to carry out more accurate counts through the assistance of drones.)The Askania Nova reserve—Ukraine’s oldest and largest biosphere, located on the eastern bank of the Dnipro River—has been under Russian occupation since last spring. Employees at the park kept up their...