On the Ile auz Aigrettes, a small island off the coast of Mauritius, conservationists have been testing out a controversial new way of putting the pieces of a broken ecosystem back together. The technique, called re-wilding, introduces non-native species to a region as ecological substitutes for native species that have gone extinct.
In 2000, Christine Griffiths of Bristol's School of Biological Sciences and her colleagues introduced Aldabra tortoises to Ile auz Aigrettes. Their hope was that the Aldabra tortoise might fill an ecological role left vacant on the island when native giant tortoises went extinct several decades ago.
Detecting forgeries isn't just the business of hand-writing experts and forgery sleuths. It turns out some bird species are highly skilled in detecting fraud as well. But for these birds, the forgeries they seek to thwart aren't bad checks or fake money but instead counterfeit eggs. And the forgers of these impostor eggs are laid by opportunistic birds, called brood parasites.
The lead from hunting ammunition often ends up in the stomach of carrion-eating birds such as eagles and turkey vultures. This is the conclusion of a series of studies performed by scientists from the UC Davis.
Scientists have developed new way of measuring how close a species is to extinction. The measurement, called the SAFE index (or the "Species Ability to Forestall Extinction" index) assesses how close a species is to its minimum viable population.