DAILY QUICK READ - MAY 29, 2016

Wolves back in California - Defenders of Wildlife 

Now that wolves have returned to California after a nearly 90-year absence, where are they most likely to live? Will their new territories overlap significantly with grazing lands and create conflicts with livestock? What kind of proactive strategies are most feasible for northern California ranchers to implement on their operations to keep both livestock and wolves safe from harm?

To help us answer these questions, we partnered with the UC Santa Barbara Bren School of Environmental Science and Management. The Bren School focuses on finding science-based solutions to environmental problems, and has a well-earned reputation as one of the top schools of its kind in the nation. The Bren Master’s Program challenges students to use real world scenarios to solve environmental problems faced by an actual client that has a real interest in the outcome.

Conservation is about changing behavior.

Excellent wide ranging interview with Dr. Andy Mack.  Dr. Mack spent two decades researching  in New Guinea's rainforests.

“Dedicated, well-trained and competent people are pretty much the lowest common denominator to all our conservation successes; the opposite is a common denominator for many conservation failures,” he told mongabay.com. “I am cautious with the idea of innovation in conservation. Innovation can provide tools for conservation. Great new remote sensing technology and GIS models are extraordinary tools. But they do not result in conservation… Conservation results when some person, or usually group of people, changes their behavior… Many conservation leaders, organizations, and donors forget this.”

“BIG,” he says, “rarely works. Big international conservation organizations have Big budgets supporting Big offices and staff with Big salaries in the United States and Europe. Per dollar, such organizations accomplish much less than smaller national organizations in rainforest countries,” he contends. “Many field conservationists say the best way to kill a good project is to give it a Big grant. Better to have smaller budgets that are actually secure over longer terms.”

From the Huffington Post.  

Extinction is the sound of silence.

It was spring 2004. The air was cool and still, the encroaching dawn light outlined the horizon; and there, in the heart of California’s Sugarloaf Ridge State Park, was Bernie Krause busily setting up his microphone.

The soundscape ecologist recorded the symphony of the forest’s sounds that day: the gurgle of the gushing stream; the melodic birdsong from sparrows and woodpeckers, robins and grosbeaks, towhees and wild turkeys. It was a rich and vibrant recording, a celebration of life and biodiversity.

Krause returned last year to the same spot in Sugarloaf, located a short drive from his Glen Ellen home. The details of the recording session were the same: springtime in early dawn, a microphone and a tripod. But the habitat’s soundtrack had altered dramatically.

“[It was the] first spring in my 77 years that was completely silent,” said Krause. “There were birds. But there was no birdsong whatsoever.” Even the surge of the stream could not be heard.

California's drought turns out to be a hoax, so where did all the animals go?  

Rape and then lie about it.  Corporations aren't people, but they are liars.

London Stock Exchange asked to bar a company that is raping the environment.  Seems fair.  This is a long read from The Guardian.  It is an illustration of how corporations are destroying the environment and wildlife with no regard for the consequences.  This example is from Peru, but it is a global issues.  Cutting these companies off from funding is a potential way to change their behavior.

Two indigenous Shipibo men from Peru’s Amazon - Sedequías Ancón Chávez and Robert Guimaraes Vasquez - paid a rare visit to the London Stock Exchange (LSE) earlier this month. The reason? To present a letter addressed to Marcus Stuttard, Claire Dorrian and Umerah Akram from the LSE’s Alternative Investment Market (AIM) urging the AIM to investigate, suspend and bar a company called United Cacao Limited SEZC - as well as amend its rules and “exact more active oversight” in general.

“The nature of the crimes which the company stands accused are an important matter for AIM to address,” the letter states. “Allowing companies listed on AIM to raise capital to violate other countries’ national laws jeopardizes the “integrity and reputation” of the market, which is grounds for suspension of a company’s trading, according to AIM Rules.”

The letter, accompanied by a 28-page report by the NGO Environmental Investigation Agency (EIA) supported by almost 400 pages of annexes, states that the AIM now has the opportunity to set an important example:

The potential precedents set by AIM’s action on this case will have global relevance for stock exchanges, market actors, the global climate, and our planet’s population – including indigenous peoples and forest communities most directly affected by land and natural resource governance. . . Funds raised on international stock exchanges should not be available for companies operating in violation of the law, threatening the rights and resources of indigenous peoples, and causing serious environmental damage.

Great use of technology and crowd-sourcing in support of conservation.

Partnering with NASA and the University of Wisconsin-Madison, the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources (DNR) has launched a wildlife observation program called Snapshot Wisconsin that will be one of the largest trail camera projects ever deployed.

The DNR will set up 4,000 to 5,000 motion-sensor cameras throughout the state to capture photos of the state's wildlife, including deer, bears, elk, coyotes, bobcats, badgers and whatever else triggers the camera shutter. The project will also use images gathered with remote sensing satellites to how seasonal changes influence animal movement and from citizen scientists to get a fuller picture of what animals are where. There will be a crowd-sourced database where the images will be analyzed for identification by ecologists, resource managers and the public.