The Loom Goes LA: This Saturday at the Book Festival

Posted on by Matt Kristoffersen

Later this week I’m heading out to Los Angeles for the book festival. I’ll be part of a panel Saturday morning at 10:30 on science books, moderated by KC Cole. My fellow panelists, Avery Gilbert and Leonard Susskind, are also among my fellow finalists for the Los Angeles Times Science Book Prize, which will be announced Friday night. So it’s possible that if you come see the panel the next day, one of us will have a particularly big smile on our face.

Originally published April 22, 2009. Copyright 2009 Carl Zimmer.

Choose Your Top Poison

Posted on by Matt Kristoffersen

Yesterday I wrote about how conservation biologists are debating the value of moving species to protect them from climate-change-driven extinction. As a follow-up (or an antidote), check out “Blood for no oil: Our obsession with climate change is killing off animals left and right.” in Slate.

Brendan Borrell, biologist turned journalist, argues that climate change poses a genuine threat to biodiversity, but “it does not come close to the immediate, irreparable damage caused by the destruction of habitat.” Good old chainsaws are still the big danger, he argues, because two-thirds of the world’s biodiversity is in the tropics, where deforestation is happening fast and the effects of climate change may not be as dramatic as they’ll be closer to the poles.

Continue reading “Choose Your Top Poison” →

Nature’s Travel Agents?

Posted on by Matt Kristoffersen

Two years ago I learned about an idea for saving species from climate-triggered extinction: move them some place nice. Here’s a piece about the concept that I wrote at the time for the New York Times. Over the past two years, more evidence of climate-induced changes to diversity has accrued. And now some scientists have actually moved some animals to test the possibility that assisted migration could help. But the idea has also now triggered some intense opposition from critics who call it a game of ecological roulette.

I’ve revisited assisted migration (now known as managed relocation) for a new piece for Yale Environment 360. Check it out.

Originally published April 20, 2009. Copyright 2009 Carl Zimmer.

As Climate Warms, Species May Need to Migrate or Perish

Posted on by admin

Yale Environment 360, April 20, 2009

Link

In the gentle hills outside York, England, a controversial experiment is quietly unfolding. It began in the summer of 2000 when Steven Willis, a biologist at the University of Durham, and his colleagues drove to a wildlife preserve called Wingate Quarry. In the back of their car was a cage full of butterflies called Marbled Whites. Willis and his colleagues removed the cage from the car, opened it, and let 500 butterflies flutter away across the scrubby meadows.

Marbled Whites are common in Europe and southern England, but in 2000 the northern edge of their range was 65 kilometers south of Wingate Quarry. Yet Willis and his colleagues suspected that they might do well there. Thanks to global warming, Wingate Quarry might now be mild enough for the butterflies to survive.

Continue reading “As Climate Warms, Species May Need to Migrate or Perish” →