Policy and Social Issues
Watch Your Step
Even low-impact recreation scares off key predators
Reed, S.E. and A.M. Merenlender. 2008. Quiet, nonconsumptive recreation reduces protected area effectiveness. Conservation Letters 1(3):146–154.
Conservationists often hail nature-based recreation and ecotourism as critical tools in the fight to preserve wild lands. This support is based on the assumption that many recreational activities have little impact on parks and [...]
Living on the Edge
Human population soars near protected areas
Wittemyer, G. et al. 2008. Accelerated human population growth at protected area edges. Science 321:123–126.
Human populations in areas adjoining nature reserves grow faster than in other areas. And, in a surprising twist, this growth is not due to people moving out of newly protected areas and then populating their boundaries. [...]
The Problem of What to Eat
Organic farming and eating locally make intuitive sense. But does conventional wisdom about eating sustainably hold up to the science?
By Natasha Loder, Elizabeth Finkel, Craig Meisner, and Pamela Ronald
July-September 2008 (Vol. 9, No. 3)
At first glance, it doesn’t seem that tough a question. Organic farming and eating locally make intuitive sense. Yet does [...]
Inside Story
As outdoor recreation wanes, will conservation commitment go with it?
Photo: ©Nathan Watkins/iStock.com
By John Weier
April (Vol. 9, No. 2)
Two years ago, when Oliver Pergams and Patricia Zaradic declared that people were forsaking U.S. national parks to play video games and surf the Net, their research sparked an intense and wide-ranging debate. Pergams and [...]
Is It Contagious?
Lethal diseases that make the jump from wildlife to humans are on the rise
A Witness to Violence
Long before the Darfur crisis, Michael Fay foresaw that the murderous Sudanese horsemen would not stop at killing elephants.
By J. Michael Fay
April-June 2008 (Vol. 9, No. 2)
Twenty-five years ago, I arrived in Manovo-Gounda-St. Floris National Park in the northern Central African Republic as a Peace Corps volunteer to be the botanist for [...]
An Agricultural Crime against Humanity
It doesn’t get madder than this. Swaziland is in the grip of a famine and receiving emergency food aid. Forty percent of its people are facing acute food shortages. So what has the government decided to export? Biofuel made from one of its staple crops, cassava.
Urban Myths
When most of us think about environmentally friendly places, we imagine a terrain untouched by concrete. Cities seem like ecological nightmares. But perhaps the conventional wisdom is exactly backward.
What Does “Wild” Really Mean?
Some ideas are like burrs stuck in your boots. If you don’t stop and deal with them, they’ll keep on troubling you. But coming to terms with a troubling idea is never as simple as shaking out your boots.
Born Again
WILLIAM MCDONOUGH, A RADICAL ARCHITECT, dismisses traditional recycling as tired and inadequate. Instead, he’s invented “industrial ecoystems” in which substances and machines are infinitely recycled.