Victoria Zoyo Sierra - Trimestre 1

  Hallan centenares de animales protegidos en el aeropuerto de Bangkok
 

http://www.larazon.es/noticia/2710-hallan-centenares-de-animales-protegidos-en-el-aeropuerto-de-bangkok

Las autoridades de Tailandia se incautaron de 340 tortugas y otros 65 reptiles protegidos en dos operaciones separadas contra el tráfico de animales realizadas ayer en el aeropuerto internacional de Bangkok, informan hoy medios locales.

Al menos dos personas han sido detenidas por estos delitos, mientras la investigación continúa.

Las tortugas, que tenían como destino final Hong Kong, fueron encontradas a primera hora de ayer en el aeropuerto de Suvarnabhumi escondidas en 50 cajas para el transporte de vegetales.


El jefe del Departamento de Aduanas, Yuthana Limkaroon, indicó que el conductor del vehículo donde se transportaron los animales desde la provincia de Chonburi fue detenido, aunque alegó desconocer el contenido real de la mercancía.


En la misma jornada, un hombre de 30 años y nacionalidad kuwaití fue apresado en el aeródromo acusado de tentativa de contrabando de animales salvajes sin permiso al ser descubierto portando 65 reptiles protegidos.


El más de medio centenar de animales, entre serpientes, camaleones y lagartijas, se encontraban escondidos en su equipaje que tenía como destino a Doha, capital de Qatar.

Cada año, unas 50 operaciones contra el tráfico ilegal de animales son efectuadas con éxito en el aeropuerto internacional de Suvarnabhumi, el más importante del país.


Tailandia, en particular Bangkok, es uno de los mayores centros de tráfico de animales en peligro de extinción porque se encuentra en un lugar estratégico entre Birmania, China, Indonesia y Malasia.

  

 *Hay un alto porcentaje de operaciones contra el tráfico ilegal de animales con un resultado exitoso en el aeropuerto de Bangkok, y ésta es una de ellas, ya que Tailandia se encuentra en un lugar clave para el tráfico de especies en extinción. 

Avistada una ballena en la bahía de la Concha en San Sebastián

http://www.larazon.es/noticia/2697-avistada-una-ballena-en-la-bahia-de-la-concha-en-san-sebastian

Una ballena, al parecer un rorcual común, ha sido visto hoy en aguas de la bahía de la Concha de San Sebastián.

Según han indicado a EFE fuentes del Aquarium de San Sebastián, el ejemplar podría tratarse de un rorcual común, también conocido como ballena de aleta, ya que se ha podido observar su lomo negro y una zona más clara en su parte inferior.

Esta especie es la segunda más grande del planeta, después del rorcual azul, ya que puede llegar a los 27 metros de longitud.

Las citadas fuentes han opinado que la mala mar que se ha registrado estos días en el Cantábrico ha podido traer a este cetáceo hasta la costa donostiarra, una zona no habitual para este tipo de animales, que generalmente no se acercan al litoral.

La semana pasada, el cadáver de otra ballena, de más de quince metros, fue hallado en la playa Las Fuentes, del pueblo de Santillán (San Vicente de la Barquera).

*Debido al extraño comportamiento del mar estos últimos días, ha sido encontrada una ballena en la bahía de San Sebastián. No se sabe con certeza si es una ballena rorcual, pero al poder observar su lomo se ha deducido.

Descubren una nueva especie de mariposa en Jamaica, la primera en 17 años

http://www.abc.es/ciencia/20121203/abci-mariposa-jamaica-salvaje-201212032319.html

La «Troyus turneri» supone el primer descubrimiento en la isla de un lepidóptero desde el año 1995.

Una nueva especie de mariposa ha sido encontrada en una zona salvaje de Jamaica, lo que supone el primer descubrimiento en la isla de un lepidóptero desde 1995, según confirmaron científicos de la Universidad de Florida.

Con el descubrimiento de esta nueva mariposa, de la familia de los hespéridos, los científicos esperan que se cree conciencia de la necesidad de proteger el área de Jamaica donde fue descubierta, una zona salvaje conocida como Cockpit Country.

De color negro y con dos franjas doradas, esta nueva especie «tiene el potencial de convertirse en una insignia de la conservación medioambiental en Jamaica, porque en conjunto tiene los colores de la bandera nacional jamaicana», apuntó Andy Warren, coautor del descubrimiento.

El experto del Centro McGuire de Lepidópteros y Biodiversidad del Museo de Historia Natural de Florida, en la Universidad de Florida, añadió que, aunque sea «una mariposa diminuta», está convencido de que va a atraer una gran atención.

*Jamaica se convierte en un espacio protegido tras encontrar una nueva especie de mariposa, no se encontraba una desde 1995. Es curioso, porque resulta tener los mismos colores de la bandera jamaicana.(Andy Warren).

El conejo, pieza clave y frágil del monte mediterráneo

http://sociedad.elpais.com/sociedad/2012/11/30/actualidad/1354289426_456818.html

Más de treinta especies de fauna dependen del conejo en el ecosistema peninsular por excelencia, el monte mediterráneo. Zorro, meloncillo, gato montés, tejón, gineta, águila-azor perdicera, buitre negro, jabalí y búho real, pero sobre todo dos especies catalogadas en peligro de extinción, el águila imperial ibérica y el lince ibérico, tienen al conejo de monte como principal componente de su dieta. Es, por tanto, un elemento esencial de las redes tróficas de numerosos hábitats, a la par que un recurso cinegético de primer orden en buena parte del territorio. El conejo es la principal pieza abatida dentro de la caza menor, con casi siete millones de ejemplares por temporada. Por todos estos motivos es prioritario para la conservación de la especie atajar tanto el nuevo brote detectado de una variante del virus de la enfermedad hemorrágica vírica (EHV) como la interacción negativa con cultivos por altas densidades de conejos.

*El conejo no es el alimento principal de la dieta de buitres negros y jabalí, pero sí está presente en ella, y en ocasiones muy presente. Es el caso del buitre negro, que busca en áreas de expansión lejanas a su hábitat conejos muertos no recogidos por los cazadores y otros afectados por las enfermedades. De hecho, en algunas épocas del año, como ahora mismo, puede suponer la mayor parte de su dieta. En la del jabalí juega menos importancia, pero también aparace.

Tiburones a la deriva

http://sociedad.elpais.com/sociedad/2012/08/22/actualidad/1345635268_640442.html

El Shark Specialist Group (SSG) de la Unión Internacional para la Conservación de la Naturaleza (UICN), compuesto por científicos expertos en peces cartilaginosos (tiburones, rayas y peces sierras), dio a conocer el pasado lunes las conclusiones de un informe donde destaca que el 13,5% de estas especies del centro y norte de América y el Caribe cumple los requisitos para ser catalogado en una de las tres categorías amenazadas (en peligro crítico, en peligro y vulnerable) asociadas con un elevado riesgo de extinción. Los científicos han estudiado casi 300 especies, lo que demuestra la amplia variedad de tiburones que existen en el planeta.

Hay tendencia a asociar este grupo de peces a una única especie: el tiburón blanco. Su protagonismo en la serie de películas iniciada por Steven Spielberg le hizo famoso y redujo a un cliché injustamente sanguinario a una familia que incluye a 480 especies, muchas de ellas habituales de los mares que rodean la península Ibérica y las islas Baleares y Canarias. De tanto fijar el objetivo en el temor a los ataques de un tiburón blanco, pasan desapercibidos a menudo datos, aportados también por la UICN, que elevan a 150 especies las amenazadas o casi amenazadas. Algunas presentes en el Mediterráneo, como el cailón, el marrajo o el cazón, han sufrido declives en su población de más del 99%. “En el caso del cazón de un 99,97% en los últimos 25 años”, precisan desde Oceana.

*Aunque solo sea por egoísmo, no podemos permitirnos la desaparición de los tiburones, son básicos en el mantenimiento del equilibrio del océano. Este artículo nos muestra lo necesarios que son los tiburones para todas las especies del planeta, especialmente para los seres humanos.

The Worldwide Vulnerability of Forests

http://green.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/11/23/the-worldwide-vulnerability-of-forests/#more-151540

One of the great scientific tasks of the day is to understand how and why trees die. It may seem like a question that would have been answered many decades ago, but it was not — at least not at a detailed physiological level. Now, amid growing signs worldwide that forests are at risk as the climate changes, scientists are trying to catch up to events.
Lately, more and more evidence is pointing toward a mechanism known as hydraulic failure as the culprit in many large-scale forest die-backs. This occurs when drought reduces the flow of water into tree roots. The trees take measures to limit the loss of water through their leaves, but trees need water flowing through them as much as humans need blood. Eventually, if the drought is bad enough, the tiny tubes that carry water up the trunk of the plant can fill with air bubbles.
Detailed understanding of this mechanism may still be developing, but anybody who has forgotten to water a house plant has seen the consequences. The flow of water through the body of the plant is interrupted, and unless moisture is restored to the soil, it can droop and eventually die.
Now comes a surprising new paper from an international research team presenting ominous findings about the risks to forests from global warming and its accompanying water stress.
For the study, released online on Thursday by the journal Nature, Brendan Choat of the University of Western Sydney in Australia, Steven Jansen of Ulm University in Germany, and a large group of their colleagues compiled data from 226 forest species at 81 sites worldwide. They found that around 70 percent of the species operate with only a narrow margin of safety when it comes to their water supply. In other words, many of the world’s important forest species are vulnerable to hydraulic failure.
In effect, the trees have adopted an aggressive evolutionary strategy, creating robust water-moving machinery that allows them to grow quickly and out-compete other trees during times of adequate rainfall, but putting them at risk of dying when water is scarce.
That means that virtually all types of forests, even in regions that seem to get plenty of rain today, are vulnerable to increased drought and increased evaporation driven by higher temperatures. If the changes in rainfall and soil moisture in coming decades turn out to be as big as many scientists fear, the Choat-Jansen paper implies that the result could be massive die-backs, shifts in the composition of forests, and a transition from forest to grassland in many regions.
That may sound alarmist, but a developing body of evidence suggests that it is already starting to happen. Last year, for example, I wrote about the large forest die-backs that are being seen in the American West and the Pacific Northwest because of mountain pine beetles, an insect pest that is moving farther north because of global warming.
We are also seeing huge impacts on forests from water stress in the Mediterranean, the Amazon and many other regions.
William R.L. Anderegg, a Stanford University researcher who was uninvolved in the new paper but is doing related work, told me he saw the new research as “a major step forward” in gaining a more complete global understanding of the risks to forests from climate change.
The new paper “tells us that many, many tree species live close to the dry edge of what they can tolerate, even if they live in a very wet area,” Mr. Anderegg said in an e-mail. It makes evolutionary sense, he added, because “no matter your environment as a tree, you would want to maximize your growth in order to compete with other trees, while still narrowly avoiding death from water stress. The practical and critical outcome of this is that trees and forests, globally, appear to all be relatively vulnerable to drought-induced mortality.”
Climate change puts at risk not only the rich diversity of life in the world’s forests, but also the ability of those forests to suck carbon dioxide out of the air, as they do today in immense volume, helping to limit global warming. In other words, if forests start dying from global warming, that means the warming will get worse, presumably killing more forests — a dangerous feedback loop.
“The consequences of longer droughts and higher temperatures are potentially dramatic,” Dr. Choat, Dr. Jansen and their colleagues wrote in the new paper. “For example, rapid forest collapse as a result of drought could convert the world’s tropical forests from a net carbon sink into a large carbon source during this century.”
The big question now is how much ability the world’s trees have to adapt. In theory, one might imagine that young trees growing under drought stress would shift their architecture in ways that would limit their risk. But whether they really have the genetic capacity to do this, or to do it quickly enough to keep up with the rapid climatic shifts projected for coming decades, is an open issue.
A distinct possibility, the scientists wrote, is that “the rapid pace of climate change may outstrip the capacity of populations to adapt.”
In a commentary accompanying the paper, Bettina M.J. Engelbrecht of the University of Bayreuth in Germany, who was not involved in the research, writes that the accumulating scientific evidence sounds “a warning bell that we can expect to see forest diebacks become more widespread, more frequent and more severe — and that no forests are immune.”

*After logging, only 15% of site carbon remains, based on scientific studies. After a fire, about 80% of site carbon is still there, and the charcoal blends with soil and enriches it.
It's counterintuitive, but true.

Droopy Flowers and Their Wiles

http://green.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/11/21/droopy-flowers-and-their-wiles/

Some flowers ply the art of seduction, dressing in showy colors, flouncing their petal skirts and grinning up at the sun, seemingly enthralled by their own attractiveness. But what about the ones that droop? Can they attract enough pollinators to thrive in a garden filled with extroverts?A study published in the British journal Functional Ecology shows that rather than being at a disadvantage, such flowers are masterminds at managing pollinators to their benefit. And that’s where the hummingbird comes in.The gleaming creature with a long sickle-like beak is often associated with bright tubular flowers. But Nir Sapir, an avian ecologist who works with the Max Planck Institute of Ornithology and a co-author of the paper, said that ornithologists have long been aware that hummingbirds feed from flowers that of varying shapes and colors, often those that are oriented downward. Dr. Sapir and his co-author and postdoctoral adviser, Robert Dudley, who specializes in animals’ flight mechanics, set out to examine the relationship between the hummingbird and the drooping bloom.For their muse, they chose the Anna’s hummingbird, a species with iridescent olive-green feathers (and, in the male’s case, a magenta ruff) that is common on the campus of University of California, Berkeley, where their research took place. After catching the birds, Dr. Dudley and Dr. Sapir placed them in an airy Plexiglas cube that was large enough to allow flight and contained artificial flowers into which nectar-filled syringes had been inserted. The flowers were oriented to point either horizontally, at a 45 degree downward angle or directly facing the floor.

Some of the flowers had a mesh-like mask that measured the bird’s uptake of oxygen as it closed in on a bloom. The researchers anticipated that this would demonstrate that hummingbirds breathe more slowly and use up less energy when supping nectar from lower-hanging flowers, which could explain the attraction to blooms oriented this way.Instead, they discovered the opposite. Energy-wise, “it doesn’t pay off for the hummingbirds to feed from these flowers,” Dr. Sapir said. Using the oxygen measures and a high-speed camera to record in-flight motion, the researchers noticed that the drooping flowers required the birds to feed by pulling their bodies upright and jerking back their heads, which requires more energy than feeding from flowers that don’t droop.Why, then, do the birds bother visiting the flowers at all? “I think the answer is a bit complicated and largely unknown,” Dr. Sapir said — but he offers a possible explanation.A flower that droops shields its nectar under its petals, thereby protecting it from the diluting effects of rain. A visiting bird can then reap the unadulterated liquid, which could explain the extra effort it expends. Besides, given that few other birds can feed at such odd angles, the hummingbird customarily gets first dibs on the prize.By hanging, the flower caters to the hummingbird’s unusual skills – something the plant may have evolved to do because of the bird’s reliable pollinating habits. “I think that the hummingbird may be an efficient pollinator because it has a good memory,” Dr. Sapir said. The birds remember what flowers they have frequented and move along to others accordingly. That way, they spread flower pollen more widely than they would if they didn’t have an internal memory map.Nectar also happens to be an energy-intensive commodity to produce, Dr. Sapir said. Hence a flower does not benefit if every pollinator in the neighborhood stops by to swig its nectar.Essentially, the flower “creates ways to select or control the identities of its pollinators,” he said. The hummingbird’s niche is being strong and capable enough to feed at difficult angles, and the bloom benefits because the bird casts pollen so widely.

*Hummingbirds do have good memories. If I am not fast enough getting the feeder out after refilling, I will find a hummer hovering in its usual place giving me the eye through the window.

Superweeds, Superpests: The Legacy of Pesticides

http://green.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/10/05/the-legacy-of-pesticides-superweeds-and-superpests/

The rapid adoption of a single weed-killer for the vast majority of crops harvested in the United States has given rise to superweeds and greater pesticide use, a new study suggests. And while crops engineered to manufacture an insect-killing toxin have reduced the use of pesticides in those fields, the emergence of newly resistant insects now threatens to reverse that trend.Farmers spray the herbicide glyphosate, widely sold under the Monsanto brand Roundup, on fields planted with seeds that are genetically engineered to tolerate the chemical. Found in 1.37 billion acres of corn, soybeans, and cotton planted from 1996 through 2011, this “Roundup Ready” gene was supposed to reduce or eliminate the need to till fields or apply harsher chemicals, making weed control simple, flexible, cheap, and less environmentally taxing.In fact, this system has led farmers to use a greater number of herbicides in higher volumes, according to the study, published this week in the peer-reviewed journal Environmental Sciences Europe.“The reason farmers adopted the technology as rapidly as they did is, in the early years, it worked very well — you couldn’t screw it up,” said the study’s author, Charles Benbrook, a research professor at Washington State University’s Center for Sustaining Agriculture and Natural Resources. Indeed, in the first six years of commercial use, crops engineered to tolerate herbicides or resist insects reduced pesticide use by 31 million pounds, or about 2 percent, according to Dr. Benbrook’s analysis of data from the Department of Agriculture.Yet by 2011, herbicide-resistant crop technology had increased herbicide use in the United States by 527 million pounds, according to the paper. Corn and cotton crops engineered to fend off rootworm, European corn borer and other crop-destroying insects by manufacturing toxins from the soil bacterium Bacillus thuringiensis, or Bt, reduced insecticide applications by 123 million pounds, or about 28 percent, from 1996 to 2011.
But over all, pesticide use last year on each acre planted with a genetically engineered crop was about 20 percent higher than on acres not planted with genetically engineered crops. And today, Dr. Benbrook writes, “a majority of American soybean, maize, and cotton farmers are either on, or perilously close to a costly herbicide and insecticide treadmill.”Some farmers, however, seem to be stepping off. Dr. Benbrook said he was surprised to find that cotton farmers started to cut back on glyphosate around 2007-8. “It’s only down a few percent, but the upward trajectory of glyphosate stopped,” he said. The typical rate had risen to around three full applications of glyphosate per crop year. “Farmers basically said, ‘I’m not going to apply it a fourth time — it’s just not worth it,’ ” he said.The vicious cycle of pesticide use begetting resistance, and ultimately more pesticide use, hardly comes as a surprise. A National Research Council reportpublished in 2010 warned that, “Eventually, repeated use will render glyphosate ineffective.” To limit the evolution of glyphosate-resistant weeds, the report advised, farmers should rotate herbicides or mix glyphosate with other chemicals.Warnings about the mechanisms for pesticide resistance go back as far as the modern environmental movement. The latest study echoes alarms first raised 50 years ago in Rachel Carson’s “Silent Spring,”, the book that “awoke the public to the manifold dangers for the environment and human health posed by the wanton use of chemical pesticides,” as David Heckel, a professor at the Max Planck Institute for Chemical Ecology in Jena, Germany, writes in acomment in the latest issue of the journal Science.The ecological harm of chemical pesticides multiplies on itself, Ms. Carson argued. First, many of these chemicals are indiscriminate, killing not only pests but also the predators and parasites that help to keep them at bay. Second, surviving pest populations become increasingly resistant to the applied toxins with each generation, as those most susceptible to the toxins die off. It’s natural selection in overdrive.As a result, more and more chemicals are required for pest control. According to Dr. Heckel, pesticide resistance has been recorded in more than 450 arthropod species since the publication of “Silent Spring” in 1962.Yet the 50 years since the book’s publication, “a paradigm shift in dealing with this global problem has also occurred,” Dr. Heckel writes. Government mandates require farmers in the United States and Australia to sow a certain percentage of each Bt field with non-Bt seed, with the goal of ensuring that some insects susceptible to the toxin survive and mate with any survivors from the Bt crop.Research from the University of Illinois and the Center for Science in the Public Interest suggests that the proportion of farmers complying with the mandate is shrinking.  Yet the strategy of putting brakes on natural selection by providing “susceptibility refuges” in tandem with high doses of the Bt toxin “are working so far in most cases” to delay resistance, Dr. Heckel writes.“Forewarned by the long history of insecticide resistance, the deployment of transgenic crops for insect control has incorporated resistance management plans from the beginning,” he writes. “Unfortunately, this has not been the case for transgenic crops engineered for herbicide tolerance, and agronomists must now follow entomologists in learning the hard lessons of the past 50 years.”

*Chemical companies should not be in the food business, particularly when they're holding a gun to the farmers' heads. They're trying to slam their foot down on Mother Nature's neck, and instead, Mother Nature will shove her foot down all of our throats.

Biodiversity in Turkey, at Risk Yet Largely Ignored

http://green.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/12/22/turkeys-biodiversity-at-risk-yet-largely-ignored/

A new paper by biologists in Turkey and the United States warns that while Turkey’s rich biodiversity is unique and globally important, it remains poorly researched and faces growing threats, especially from development.In the paper, published in the journal Biological Conservation, the 13 authors say they hope to alert the world to the intensity of the assault on the country’s biodiversity. “It’s worse than at any time in Turkey’s history,” said Cagan Sekercioglu, an assistant professor of biology at the University of Utah and the paper’s lead author.Of 34 places in the world identified as biodiversity hot spots — places where the diversity of life is unusually rich – Turkey is the only country covered almost in its entirety by three of these regions. A big reason is simply that it has coastlines on four seas, and four major mountain ranges.Of some 9,000 known species of vascular plants, 3,000 are found only in Turkey. A new plant species is found there once a week on the average scientists say, and its array of reptile and amphibian species is comparable to that of all of Europe. New mammals are even being identified, among them a mountain gazelle discovered in 2009.
That such a large species went unidentified for so long reflects a lack of research and documentation, the scientists write. Yet its uniqueness was not widely appreciated. “The population of this vulnerable species became threatened within only a year of its discovery by the planned construction of a cement plant in its small range,” the paper states.

The white stork, whose numbers have declined sharply in Turkey in recent decades.
One reason that Turkey’s natural treasures are poorly studied is cultural, Dr. Sekercioglu said. While scientists in the United States and Europe do research in the field for weeks and months at a time, that is not the custom in Turkey, where professors seldom leave the classroom. What is more, he said, Turkey is not developed enough to pay proper attention to its own biodiversity, or “charismatic” enough to capture the imagination of international organizations that cast a spotlight on threatened ecosystems.Dr. Sekercioglu is trying to change this through a nonprofit called KuzeyDoga that works to promote biodiversity research and conservation in Turkey.Even as Turkey begins to grasp and study the wealth of its natural life, Dr. Sekercioglu says, it is receding in the face of inexorable development pressures, from dams to vacation homes. While environmental laws exist, they are often modified when they get in the way of projects, he added.The paper also cites the case of a professor who was investigating heavy metals from mining found in the breast milk and feces of infants. The professor, Onur Hamzaoglu, was sued by local mayors and faces a two- to four-year jail term for ‘threatening to incite fear and panic among the population,’’ the authors write.The biologists call on the country to foster a culture of conservation that they say has been sorely lacking. One way of achieving this may be to tie environmental concerns to Turkey’s history, a source of national pride, they suggest.“Instead of beginning a dialogue on large predator conservation by describing ecological interactions,” the paper says, “one could describe the Roman-era stone traps for Anatolian tigers and leopards still visible in the Toros Mountains.”

*"It has coastlines on three oceans" - actually it has coastlines to four seas: Black, Marmara, Aegean and Eastern Mediterranean, but to no ocean.

Biodiversity, and Green Slugs, in Action

http://scientistatwork.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/03/23/biodiversity-and-green-slugs-in-action/

The coastal western hemlock zone on north Vancouver Island, British Columbia, is wet and windy. I start around the Old Growth Trail here in Cathedral Grove, a forest provincial park about 150 kilometers (about 90 miles) south of where I was with the Steller sea lions. It rains about 1,605 millimeters (about 63 inches) a year. The Beaufort scale of wind speed rates winds of 40 to 65 kilometers an hour (25 to 40 miles an hour) as a strong breeze that will flip small branches into the air and set the whole tree in motion, like the trees I see now. In a gale wind of more than 65 kilometers an hour (about 40 m.p.h.), branches usually break from the trees.

The pruned toes, the muddy trail shoes, the slop-slopping socks, the research notebook papers ripped out and tossed to the wind are all part of doing research here. But it’s worth it. The scale and diversity of plant and animal species in the coastal western hemlock zone that one can observe brimming from every cranny are astounding. Under a moss-laden stand of old-growth Douglas fir trees I find gyrating plants of all sorts: ebullient amabilis fir, grand fir, western white pine and lodgepole pine above bunches of salal, bushes of Oregon grape and bubbling heads of red huckleberry. The odd vanilla leaf, twinflower and bracken also pop up. I watch out for the sprouting skunk cabbage.Cathedral Grove is the perfect site to learn what natural ecosystems can teach us about sustainable community development, lessons involving notions of “limits” and “place.” The old-growth Douglas fir standing before me, a sentinel nine meters (almost 30 feet) in circumference, is immense but not limitless. Continued economic growth, given the finite nature of the earth and its ecological systems, poses an interesting question to us in our research; next week we’ll be exploring whether economic growth can continue if growth is concentrated in an ethereal economy, where ideas and information dominate over physical inputs. I’m a particular fan of the “law of the jungle” strategy of the glittering wood moss that I’m palming.

I continue clockwise on the trail, shimmying between some stalks in a sea of devil’s club and hopping over some more skunk cabbage sprouts. I then stand to carefully witness the process of “place” in the secondary succession occurring in this forest. Place in ecological systems is shaped and constrained by the geographical and environmental features of the physical space a community occupies. How can we reconcile the variability of place with the common global goal of sustainability? Can we have a sense of place when we’ve become immersed in a globalized world? Forest products are British Columbia’s most important export commodity, and 32 percent of it ends up in China. My brother sends me pictures from where he works on the Tibetan plateau. The kids are wearing Nike shirts!

*Maybe having a sense of place as a foundation for one's identity can foster the development of the kind of character that can mold the needs and opportunities of globalism into a form that does not destroy the identities, the communities, of its participants.