Conservation Science

But Beal says he has come up with a better way to grow lobsters in captivity. Through trial and error over several years, he has learned how to grow lobsters in a protected environment until they are several inches long — not big enough to be sold, but big enough to settle to the bottom when they are released and possibly to improve their survival rate. Read the full story

Though the global economy has accelerated the process in recent decades by the sheer volume of ships, most from Asia, entering West Coast ports, the marine invasion has been in full swing since 1869, when the transcontinental railroad brought the first shipment of East Coast oysters packed in seaweed and mud to San Francisco, said Andrew Cohen, director of the Center for Research on Aquatic Bioinvasions in Richmond, Calif. For nearly a century before then, ships sailing up the coast carried barnacles and seaweeds. Read the full story

Despite their extensive range, researchers know little about the behavior of these solitary creatures, says Mark Elbroch, a wildlife ecologist at the University of California, Davis. Now, a first-of-its-kind field study by Elbroch and Davis colleague Heiko Wittmer has shed new light on the puma's ecological role. Between March 2008 and September 2009, the researchers caught nine pumas living in a 1100-square-kilometer region in southern Chile and strapped GPS-equipped radio collars on them.

Mark Elbroch works to mitigate human-carnivore conflict through research and education, with the goal of providing the data needed to fight old mythology that perpetuates fear of large carnivores. His latest study suggests that food provided by pumas may be vital to the maintenance and diversity of scavenger and decomposer communities in Patagonia and elsewhere. Read the original research that appeared in Biology Letters (PDF download, less than 0.5 MB)

In August 2011, federal marshals raided the Gibson Guitar Corporation in Tennessee, apparantly preparing to charge the famous builder of instruments with trafficking in illegally obtained wood. In the aftermath of the raid there was intense media attention on the company and its sourcing practices. Andrea Johnson of EIA was interviewed by NPR because of her previous work on Gibson's allegedly illegal sourcing practices in Madagascar.