conservation
Great White Shark on Display at the Monterey Bay Aquarium
As of August 31st, 2011, the sixth live great white shark to ever go on display made it’s debut in the Open Sea tank at the Monterey Bay Aquarium in California.
This is one of the things that makes the Monterey Bay Aquarium great in my opinion, sharing this beautiful creature with the world, alive and magnificent. I visited the second great white they ever displayed, and it was unlike anything I had ever experienced. I had seen sharks in aquariums, reef sharks while SCUBA diving, in documentary films, and of course Shark Week, but this was unlike any shark I had ever seen.
The beauty and grace of a great white shark (even one this small) can be seen on TV, but encountering it in person is a completely different experience (even if it is only in a tank). Being that close and in person gave me a sense of awe an appreciation like nothing else, only if I had been swimming alongside it would I have felt deeper. Exactly the response conservationists at the aquarium are hoping for in placing this shark on display. › Continue reading
New US Map for Wildlife Conservation
A great new technological step for wildlife conservation efforts comes in the form of a map. The Gap Analysis Program (GAP), which is itself a program under the umbrella of the US Geological Survey, makes it’s mission to “keep common species common.” Essentially, the objective of the program is to maintain that species not (yet) threatened by extinction don’t end up reaching an endangered species list, an issue often deprived of much-needed attention in light of it’s preventative nature. It takes a different track to keep policy makers (and anyone for that matter) informed than traditional conservation efforts which generally maintain species-by-species data, by instead maintaining information about regions and landscapes (which in turn allow those who will want to manipulate them a better idea of what they’d be doing).
A Level 3 Image of Washington State using the GAP Viewer
These efforts recently culminated in a national land cover viewer (and accompanying data set) that combines several important relevant data-sets into one easily accessible package. To be more particular, it combines the following:
- The Southwest Regional Gap Analysis project (2004)
- The Southeast Regional Gap Analysis Project (2007)
- The Northwest Regional Gap project
- The updated California Gap project (2009)
- The Landfire Project (for all remaining regions)
The Green Card
If you are a coffee lover like me, receiving or giving a coffee gift card will put an instant smile on your face. With the new Conservation International Starbucks Gift Card, you get a little something more to smile about. From March 9th to December 31st, 2010, every time the CI card is used, Starbucks will donate five cents to Conservation International in order to help with their efforts to decrease deforestation and continue to find solutions to climate change. Starbucks Coffee has teamed up with Conservation International for more than 10 years in order to improve ethical sourcing of coffee and fight the global climate change that threatens the growth of coffee beans.
Peter Seligmann, Chairman and CEO of CI states that “the alliance between Starbucks and Conservation International is an important step in reducing emissions from deforestation, which accounts for 20 percent of all the carbon released into the atmosphere – double the world’s cars, trucks, and trains combined. Our partnership engages one of the great corporations, their customers and coffee farmers in this battle against climate change. By stepping up this partnership we have aligned our existing work and success to address the most pressing issue of our time.” For details about › Continue reading
