February 2009 Entries
Forests and the benefits they provide are multidimensional. The relative value given to forests has also varied in different stages of human history. My home country was named after the Brazilwood tree...
by Jaime Cavelier, Natural Resources.
Access to genetic resources and the fair and equitable sharing of the benefits arising from their utilization (or ABS for short) is one of the three objectives of the Convention of Biological Diversity (CBD). The international recognition of the importance of this issue was reiterated with the establishment of the Ad-Hoc Open-ended Working Group.
On 19 February 2009 the Bushmeat Crisis Task Force members joined together to celebrate the many accomplishments of their work and to highlight the urgent needs that remain to address. The bushmeat issue is now recognized as one of the most important threats facing wildlife and local communities in Africa today. Dozens of on-the-ground programs, new policies and increased capacity have been developed as a result of BCTF and member efforts.
A new study published today by the journal Conservation Biology found that more than 80 percent of the world’s major armed conflicts from 1950-2000 occurred in regions identified as the most biologically diverse and threatened places on Earth...
Yesterday, Somali pirates released Japanese and Ukranian ships and their crew, held hostage for three and five months, respectively. The cargo was described as unidentified chemicals, in the case of the Japanese vessel, and tanks and munitions, in the case of the Ukranian one. But piracy of a different form is taking place in the world’s oceans, loading vessels with a more noble form of cargo than chemicals and guns...
As part of Charles Darwin’s 200th birthday celebrations, the February 6 edition of Science brings several review papers on diversification and speciation, the processes that ultimately produce biodiversity. This issue also carries several original research articles on these same topics...I could only count a handful of astronomy papers in this week’s edition...