Conservation

Life at Mexico’s Cuatro Cienegas Basin has been present for the past 3.5 billion years, but it is meeting its biggest challenge yet: us.

John Latham, a pioneer of cloud brightening technology, tells us about geoengineering, the deliberate manipulation of the earth’s climate to counteract global warming.

High up in the Virungas Mountains, trying to balance on twigs with nothing to hold on to, Sheila looks up to see a large female gorilla approaching her with seemingly no plan to walk around her. Face to face with the gorilla, Sheila is unsure where to move. The ground below her is slippery and [...]

Vagabondjourney.com reported in August of 2010 that an international community of doners have agreed to pay Ecuador 3.6 billion dollars to not extract oil from the Yasuni Biosphere preserve that lies within their borders. This was at once a ground breaking initiative as well as a controversial one: some environmentalists think that this could be a new [...]

Over 1,000 previously unknown species have been found in the Mekong basin in the past decade. In 2010 alone, scientist have found 100 plants, 28 reptiles, 25 fish, and seven amphibians that were previously unknown to science. The Mekong river and its surrounding watershed is one of the most bio-diverse regions on the globe. Though [...]

Long honed cultural traditions, sometimes even the most ridiculous, often make sense if observed in the environment or historical contexts in which they were honed. Traditional/ old/ indigenous cultures around the world often have mechanisms which either directly or indirectly teach its members how to live sustainably within their environments — a practice often referred to [...]

The Mekong River is currently under siege by a proposal for a major dam on the river’s main stream in northern Laos. Recently, Laos, Thailand, Cambodia, and Vietnam agreed to put construction of the Xayaburi Dam on hold until an official impact assessment can be made of the potentially adverse environmental, social, economic, and food security effects of [...]

Construction of the Xayaburi Dam, the first of eleven dams planned for the Mekong River, was postponed on December 8th, as Cambodia, Laos, Thailand, and Vietnam concurred that more data is needed on the potentially adverse environmental and social impacts of the project. Many environmental and social groups working in the region applaud the decision, [...]

Evan Carson, a biologist at the University of New Mexico who specializes in the evolution genetics of desert fishes, has been conducting research in the the Cuatro Cienegas Basin in the north of Mexico since 1998. He refers to this pocket of unique bio-diversity as being, “without question, one of the most remarkable natural systems on Earth.” The pools, springs, and rivers of the Cuatro Cienegas basis give life to an ecosystem that does not have a compliment anywhere else in this world.