Ecology, The Environment and Conservation

Marine researchers and scientists have long sought a practical way to track the position and migration of fish in the world’s oceans in order to provide research data for stock management and fish conservation.

Sigmur Gudbjornsson, Managing Director of Stjornu-Oddi, the Icelandic lead partner in EUREKA project E! 2326 GPSFISH, describes how they solved the problem by having ships “transmit by sonar GPS (global positioning satellite) data which is then stored on any fish that has been previo

Biological invasions have well-known direct effects on native ecosystems but may also unleash forces with complex, unexpected consequences. These ecological surprises may be especially common in simple systems, like islands, following introduction of ’megainvaders,’ like tramp ants.

In the September issue of Ecology Letters, O’Dowd, Green, and Lake show that impacts of invasion by the crazy ant Anoplolepis gracilipes ramify through the food web in rainforest on Christm

Floods are one of Europe’s most widespread disasters. Major flooding has occurred nearly every year somewhere on our continent during the last few decades. Today, European Research Commissioner Philippe Busquin is visiting the city of Dresden (Germany), which was hit very hard last year by one of the worst flood catastrophes to occur in Central Europe since the Middle Ages. During this visit, the European Commission has organised a media briefing at Dresden’s Ständehaus to present the results of

According to Dutch researcher Liesbeth Bakker, rabbits prefer grassland grazed by cows. The rabbits benefit from grass that has been grazed short by the cows as this is of a good quality. Furthermore, this grazing relationship leads to a greater diversity of plant species.

The researchers studied a number of plots in the Junner Koeland, a floodplain grassland along the river Overijsselse Vecht. Staatsbosbeheer uses cows to manage the grassland vegetation. However, the numerous rabbits and me

After surviving for thousands of years in the lakes of Southeast Asia, the East Asian giant softshell turtle may finally be faced with extinction, as the last member of the species lingers on in Vietnam’s Hoan Kiem Lake. Reptile specialists from the Bronx Zoo-based Wildlife Conservation Society recently observed the reptile in its last known habitat and fear it may live out its final years without a mate.

“This individual could very well be the last of its kind,” said John Behler, Cura

A new, all-natural, pollutant-busting microbe has been discovered by scientists in Germany. Research published in the October 2003 issue of Microbiology, a Society for General Microbiology journal, describes a new strain of bacterium, which could be used in the near future to clean up polluted land.

Over the years, many harsh and highly toxic chemicals have built-up in the environment. Dr Rapp and his colleagues at the National Research Centre for Biotechnology in Braunschweig, Germany, have