Dena Spatz News Today

The number of ocean going birds has declined 70 percent since the 1950s, but restoring their populations can bolster marine ecosystems that sequester carbon.

Fifty years ago, ornithologist Stephen Kress had a bold vision for Eastern Egg Rock, an island off the coast of Maine. He wanted to restore the island’s former colony of Atlantic puffins that hunters had wiped out in the 1880s. This kind of seabird restoration had never been done before, but Kress was determined to […]

Study provides a tool to restore and build climate resilience for seabirds by relocating or restoring them to places where they can survive.

Damselfish can be fastidious farmers. They prune and cultivate small patches of algae, often no more than half a square meter (5 square feet) in area, ensuring they have a steady food source. One species in the Caribbean even herds tiny mysid shrimp around their underwater “gardens,” which the shrimp dose with their fecal fertilizer. […]

Giant tortoises (Chelonoidis spp.) have trundled across the Galápagos Islands for perhaps 3 million years. Over that time, they’ve evolved to survive with little food or water in the islands’ harsh desert environment. But this ability also made the tortoises an excellent source of food for mariners, who often picked up a couple when they […]

New Zealand tops world for island pest eradication: research-

But even the best-performing countries on the biodiversity front have a long way to go in eradicating invasive species.