Pacific Standard May-June 2013 Cover

It’s a Gull-Eat-Whale World Out There, Thanks to People

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A month ago ecologist Leah Gerber asked our readers to consider a biodiversity conundrum—in preserving a natural habitat, how should humans react when one struggling species starts edging a more critically threatened one toward extinction. In this case it was Galapagos sharks snacking on monk seals in the Papahānaumokuākea Marine National Monument; the National Marine Fisheries Service has called for culling the sharks. The dilemma about conservation triage arises because we have to hold two logically inconsistent ideas to view it—a preserve assumes that humans aren’t involved, yet ... Read More

Fear Powers Zombie Bugs

Zombie Grasshopper

File under “Career change.” While the rest of us mopes suffer the nine-to-five in our stuffy cubicles, ecologist Dror Hawlena spends his days picking through lizard poop, gluing spiders’ mouths shut, and dissecting grasshopper guts under a microscope. He’s tracked leopards, ibexes, and wild boars. When field trips takes him out of the office, they take him waaay out of the office, to the Yale-Myers forest, the Negev Desert, Glacier National Park, the Balearic Islands, and the Wadi Rum valley, in Connecticut, Israel, Montana, Spain, and Jordan, respectively. His coworkers are guys like ... Read More

Solving Eco-challenges With Today’s Data

New academic centers usually bring the promise of spanking-new research, but a new entity at the University of Maryland promises to take undervalued existing research and synthesize it into answers for pressing environmental challenges. The Socio-Environmental Synthesis Center, headed by entomologist Margaret Palmer, will focus entirely on the processing and better utilization of existing information. The center's goal is to fill gaps between scholarship and public policy, and between environmental science and social science. As Palmer explained to Miller-McCune, "The idea is that ... Read More

The Making of the Ocean Health Index

If all goes well, when a scientific paper is published and the media pick up on the story, a lot of effort gets boiled down into a soundbite. New cure for cancer discovered. Water found on Mars. Fish stocks disappearing from the world's oceans. This focus can be a good thing for communicating science to the public, but it masks a lot of what was necessary to produce that result. Often, the story of how, and why, science gets done is as interesting and important as the actual result. Indeed, the decisions about what does not belong in the soundbite are as critical as the decisions about what ... Read More

As Environment Degrades, Our Well-Being Grows?

Earth's ecosystems are steadily deteriorating thanks to unsustainable practices like overfishing, rainforest clearing and natural gas "fracking." So, wouldn't it follow that human beings around the globe are getting sicker, poorer and less satisfied with their lives? Not so, according to Ciara Raudsepp-Hearne, an environmental consultant and part-time lecturer at Montreal's McGill University. In "Untangling the Environmentalist's Paradox: Why Is Human Well-being Increasing as Ecosystem Services Degrade," published i n the September issue of BioScience, Raudsepp-Hearne and colleagues found ... Read More

Long Nights and Thin Ice: A Penguin’s Tale

Penguins Antarctica

It is the best of times, it is the worst of times — for penguins. But like the French populace careening to apocalypse in Dickens' "Tale of Two Cities," the final outcome for the Adèlie penguins that ecologist Grant Ballard studies will be dire. Ballard, the director of the Informatics Program at PRBO Conservation Science in Petaluma, Calif., has been studying the Adélies on Antarctica's Ross Island since 1996. (A nonprofit, PRBO started in 1965 as Point Reyes Bird Observatory and now studies biodiversity conservation on land and sea.) His research has determined that some ... Read More

The Pearls of La Paz

Punta Coyote, another one of the great bays near La Paz. (Kristian Beadle)

In La Paz in Baja California, our Kiri blogger attends the Waterkeeper Alliance conference and learns about hopes for improving coastal areas. Location: Near the beach at Balandra, southeast of La Paz; a bay and wetland complex that was submitted for protected area status by La Paz residents. Conditions: Hot and dry winds are gusty at night and calm during the morning. The water is cool and pleasant for swimming. Isla Espiritu Santo glimmers in the horizon as sailboats go by. Discussion: La Paz was once rich in pearls. Expeditions financed by Hernán Cortés in the 1530s came back ... Read More

The Primitive Science of Restoration

This article originally appeared on Nov. 16, 2009. In the northern Channel Islands off California, a cat-sized native fox is making a dramatic comeback, thanks to a 10-year, $22 million multifaceted program to save it from extinction. The last of the resident golden eagles, a nonnative species that was snacking on foxes like kids in a candy store, was removed in 2006 and transported to the far-off northern Sierra Nevada. Also, fish-eating bald eagles, a territorial sort that was once native to the islands, were reintroduced to help chase off its red-meat-eating cousins. It's just one ... Read More

Installing Meters at the Beach

Pillows of warm sand, sparkling blue-green waves and the sun beaming over all — who doesn't love a trip to the beach? Whether it's California, Jamaica or Kenya, vacationers flock to these iconic interfaces between land and sea. Something about sun, sand and surf holds the human imagination captive. Perhaps the best part: Beaches are usually free. But should they be? In addition to providing the obvious recreational opportunities to sunbathe, swim and fly kites, beaches buffer the coastline from erosion and provide habitat for marine creatures. These benefits are referred to as ... Read More

Just Pack a Tent

Edward Abbey's landmark 1968 narrative Desert Solitaire passionately decried the swarming "industrial tourists" that were trampling upon and, perhaps unwittingly, destroying the U.S. national forests as he knew them. The wizened Forest Service employee vehemently, and correctly, asserted that the "preservation" of these protected areas was no more than mere public relations sloganeering. The government, including administrators of the Forest Service, seemed to be doing very little to resist the advancing tide of paved roads, tourist hordes and the "bloody tyrant" — the ... Read More