Liz Kimbrough

Throughout the tropics, staggering amounts of land have been designated for natural resource extraction—as much as 40 percent of Peru, 30 percent of Indonesia and 35 percent of Liberia. However, much of this land is already in use; it is being inhabited by local communities and indigenous peoples.

Think first before you eradicate non-native species says Dr. Ariel E. Lugo, the current director of the International Institute of Tropical Forestry within the USDA Forest Service, based in Puerto Rico. Lugo, an accomplished ecologist, supports the idea that both native and non-native plants have important roles to play in conservation efforts.

Gold mining is on the rise in the Guiana Shield, a geographic region of South America that holds one of the world’s largest undisturbed tract of rainforest.

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In a YouTube video posted Monday, Leonardo DiCaprio challenged Canadian Prime Minister Stephan Harper to the Ice Bucket Challenge. While helping to fund research efforts for amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS), DiCaprio’s video seemed to also have another purpose.

The idea behind DNA fingerprinting is that regulators could take DNA samples from imported wood to verify that the products are the correct species and are coming from legal localities.

Dr. Douglas Sheil on forest conservation: “Combine democracy with modern communication technology and improved information access, and it seems that governments will increasingly be held accountable. So will conservation.”

In the Brazilian Amazon, deforestation alerts are being submitted via smartphones. On the ground technicians send alerts to a database stored in “the cloud.”

Dr. Thomas Gillespie is concerned with the connections between conservation and disease, with a particular emphasis on primates.

Is it possible to equitably divide the planet’s resources between human and non-human societies? Can we ensure prosperity and rights both to people and to the ecosystems on which they rely?