Conservation Science

Fellow Amy Rogers is now working with DroneSeed, a company that works in post-fire environments to plant native trees and vegetation using drone swarms and spray to protect them. Learn more

Scientists from ETH Zurich were once again hugely successful in the latest round of the prestigious ERC Starting Grants: 3 women and 12 men each received an average of 1.5 million euros for their research projects. In total, ETH Zurich will receive 23 million euros. The selected projects cover a range of disciplines, from astronomy and mathematics to climate modelling. The researchers work in nine different ETH departments (see project details below).

One of the tough realities of commercial fishing is that fishermen and seals sometimes compete for the same fish. And when they do, interactions between the animals and fishing nets can occur, leaving fishermen with ruined catches and damaged fishing gear, and seals with the possibility of lethal entanglements.

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Crews for the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power recently bulldozed hundreds of federally endangered plants in Topanga State Park, and both state and city authorities have launched investigations into DWP’s actions, part of a wildfire prevention project aimed at replacing 200 aging wooden power poles with steel ones.

For the Yurok tribe, fishing isn’t a recreational weekend activity to be paired with a cold beer. It’s a way of subsistence, a way of life. Fellow Keith Parker’s groundbreaking biology research regarding a new subspecies of Pacific lamprey, recently published in the science journal Molecular Ecology, may be the key to saving his tribe’s way of life.

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This summer, the Trump Administration issued a proposed rule that would drastically change the environmental review and public input process for projects in national forests. This proposal would be the biggest rollback of NEPA regulations affecting forest management in over a decade. If enacted, this new rule would allow commercial logging, the conversion of illegal off-road vehicle routes to official U.S. Forest Service roads, and other activities across large swaths of land without preparation of detailed environmental studies and the opportunity for public input, writes Fellow Nick Jensen.

How much death can a species tolerate? Researchers have estimated the number of North Atlantic right whales that could be killed every year while still maintaining a stable population. “That number is 0.9,” says Sarah Sharp, from the International Fund for Animal Welfare. Six have died this month alone. “The species cannot sustain these kinds of losses. We’re seriously worried that extinction is in the all-too-near future.”