Tuesday, February 5, 2008

new links, new issue of electronic journal, bad news for CRP

A new portal for international conservation is available through the World Conservation Union (IUCN). See the Conservation Commons at this link.

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The latest issue of the online journal Avian Conservation and Ecology is available at this link.

Scroll down to the right-hand column to find the table of contents of papers (which are all available free as pdfs).

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There's bad news on the horizon for the Conservation Reserve Program (CRP). This program, which has proved vitally important to grassland and "prairie pothole"-nesting birds, is at risk due to the rush to grow grain for ethanol. (And ethanol from corn is not the best way to make ethanol...). Here's a quote from the most recent Birding Community E-bulletin: "Some trends are particularly disturbing. For example, in North Dakota, new federal figures have shown that about 420,000 acres of CRP were converted back to cropland in 2007. That adds up to more than 12 percent of all CRP acres in the state. As summarized by Ducks Unlimited (DU) staff in Bismarck, 'It's as if someone plowed up a three-mile swath of wildlife habitat across North Dakota, from its southern border to Canada.

Read more about this at this link. Find previous online copies of the Birding Community e-bulletin mentioned above here.

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