Author Archive
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“A Force to Fight Global Warming”: CI-led paper in Nature
“Time and again, biodiversity conservation provides us with solutions to problems we didn’t even know existed yet. Climate change is shaping up to be the biggest example of this to date, with conservation benefiting us by both slowing climate change and lessening its impacts on people.” – Will Turner, Director of Global Priorities in CI’s Center for Applied Biodiversity Science At CI, we have made it our mission to conserve natural ecosystems and protect the essential benefits they provide for all life on Earth. This challenge is especially vital in the face of threats like climate change. This week, we are proud ... -
The New Issue of Team Earth Magazine Is Here!
Our fifth issue of Team Earth Magazine is out today and available now! With every issue, we travel around the world to the forefronts of CI's global efforts, from urban board rooms to rural mountain villages. Issue Five is no exception, taking readers from the streets of New York City to Brazil's farmland to thousands of feet under the sea. Inside this issue, you will: get a unique perspective on climate change and Copenhagen from Richard Haass, Chairman of the Council on Foreign Relations and CI Board member explore Brazil’s Cerrado region, and learn how CI is working ... -
Help Us Help Team Earth
In September, Fisk Johnson, Chairman and CEO of SC Johnson, stood in front of the crowd at CI’s Team Earth launch event in New York City and announced SC Johnson’s role as a founding partner of Team Earth. This week, his business launched a new initiative that embodies the spirit of Team Earth: environmentally-minded, innovative, and above all, reliant on you for success. Team Earth's first focus is to fight climate change by saving the world's forests. Every year, we lose 32 million acres of tropical forests – an area the size of England. With every acre lost, we also lose ... -
CI Vice President Receives Conservation Award
Last week in New York City, Carlos Manuel Rodriguez, CI’s Vice President for Conservation Policy, received an award for his outstanding effort in the fight to conserve jaguar (Panthera onca) populations in Central America. The former Minister of the Environment and Energy in his home country of Costa Rica, Rodriguez has been instrumental to regional conservation efforts for many years. He has helped pioneer the concept of payment for ecosystem services, a system that CI is now implementing with local communities in ecosystems around the globe. The Rabinowitz-Kaplan prize was presented to Rodriguez by the Panthera Foundation, a nonprofit dedicated ... -
The Fragile Art of Nature
The logo and slogan for COP 10 to be held in Nagoya, Japan, 18-29 October 2010. Last week, Japan launched the logo for the International Year of Biodiversity (2010) and the Convention of Biological Diversity's (CBD) 2010 meeting in Nagoya (COP10). If you have been following CI's recent activities, the concept behind the logo may seem familiar – it depicts a harmonious circle of animal, plant and human origami figures. (see left) Through the ancient Japanese art, the logo reflects the beauty and fragility of biodiversity, as well as the importance of maintaining harmony in the natural world. The depiction of ... -
A Fresh Face for Conservation.org
When you land on conservation.org this week, you may notice something different...we've refreshed our website to better serve you! We reorganized the content to showcase the benefits of nature that CI works to protect – a stable climate, clean water, abundant food, human health, cultural importance and the as-yet undiscovered values that nature gives us. We also wanted more opportunities to share straight from the home page the huge variety of work we're doing all over the world – whether it's video footage from a recent rainforest expedition, notes from the latest climate conference, or journal entries from scientists exploring new ... -
A Day in the Field (and by “field”, I mean woods)
As you might expect, CI's headquarters in Arlington, Virginia is full of people who live for being outside; after all, our passion for nature is what brought all of us here. Ironically, the demands of our jobs often keep us indoors at our desks. Luckily, this isn't always the case. A couple of weeks ago, I joined about 25 CI staff members and volunteers from REI and the Potomac Appalachian Trail Club in McLean, Virginia's beautiful Turkey Run Park. Less than ten miles from my house in the middle of DC, the park's thick woods and ample river views felt ... -
New Hope for World’s Rarest Lemur
A recent scientific expedition in Madagascar's Ankeniheny-Zahamena rainforests has found evidence of the greater bamboo lemur (Prolemur simus) in twice the number of locations it was previously believed to inhabit. Believed to be the world's most endangered lemur, with less than 100 remaining in the wild, this discovery by a team of researchers from CI and partner organizations spells hope for this and other species that may have higher numbers than have been recorded. Local conservationists believe that the support from local communities is playing a key role in the protection of important lemur habitat. The lemurs' presence in the ... -
Update on Natural Disasters in Asia-Pacific Region
By now, everyone has heard of the tragic events which have unfolded in the last few weeks in the Asia-Pacific region. Two typhoons in the Philippines, where the capital of Manila remains flooded. An 8.2-magnitude earthquake and resulting tsunami near the Samoan Islands, which has completely wiped out entire coastal villages. And two massive earthquakes in Indonesia, where people are still trapped under rubble and awaiting rescue. Thankfully, all CI staff and their families in these countries have been accounted for. However, the scale of these multiple disasters (at least hundreds dead, and thousands more homeless) means that everyone has been ... -
Cheetah Sighting
Reason #17 why I love my job: not many people get to spend their lunch hour four feet away from a live cheetah. Then again, I suppose some people might see close proximity to a large, agile carnivore as less than desirable, but I trusted in the cheetah's more than capable handlers to control him. This 11-month old "cheetah ambassador" came as a visitor from the Columbus Zoo, along with an Anatolian shepherd dog that has been raised alongside the cheetah. The zoo staff has found that raising the dogs together with the cheetahs makes the cheetahs more relaxed and even-tempered ...
