Natural Resource Management

The new statewide president of Mass Audubon has filed for intervenor status for its West Mountain Wildlife Sanctuary in Plainfield, just over the border from Berkshire County, in the federal review of the proposed Tennessee Gas Pipeline Co. project. ... "At this stage, we're optimistic that in working with the Conservation Commission and Stantec, the restoration plan will be adequate and that letter will be the only need we'll have for legal counsel," said Becky Cushing, director of the Berkshire Sanctuaries.

County by county, West Virginia’s coalfield communities are being forced to cut jobs, eliminate programs and slash benefits as they steadily collapse alongside the Mountain State’s plummeting coal severance tax revenue. ... But Evan Hansen, president of Downstream Strategies and one author of the white paper, said diversifying the economy might be the only way out.

Forty percent of the world’s people share the tropics with 50 percent of the world’s terrestrial life. World population has more than doubled since 1960. Land use decisions will become increasingly controversial as it soars from 7.2 billion to a projected 9.6 billion in 2050. A downloadable publication from the Smithsonian and the BIO Program of the Inter-American Development Bank, “Managing watersheds for ecosystem services in the steepland Neotropics,” offers new tools to weigh trade-offs between water, timber, biodiversity and development.

Clemson scientists Rob Baldwin and Paul Leonard have recently published a research article that examines the existing distribution of conservation easements in the Appalachian Mountains.

In Jewish tradition, Challah is a loaf of yeast-risen bread, often braided, blessed and then consumed on Sabbaths and holidays. Every aspect of Challah – from its making to its eating – is replete with wisdom tradition and reminders about our overarching duty to steward Creation. The burgeoning protests against Dominion Resources and its partners over the proposed Atlantic Coast Pipeline in Virginia, West Virginia, and North Carolina is a kind of community Challah with righteousness at its core.

Removals of forest biomass in the northeastern US may intensify over the coming decades due to increased demand for renewable energy. For forests to regenerate successfully following intensified harvests, the nutrients removed from the ecosystem in the harvested biomass (including N, P, Ca, Mg, and K) must be replenished through a combination of plant-available nutrients in the soil rooting zone, atmospheric inputs, weathering of primary minerals, biological N fixation, and fertilizer additions.

“Decisions by the more than 140,000 families in our state who own woodlands about how they use these lands — and whether or not they convert them to other uses — is a matter of significant public interest and environmental concern,” said Robert Klee ’99 M.E.S., ’04 J.D., ’05 Ph.D., commissioner of the Connecticut Department of Energy and Environmental Protection (DEEP).

When Jack Connelly first began studying the greater sage grouse in Idaho in the late 1970s, "it was not unusual to see 500 in a single flock," says the biologist, who is retired from the Idaho Department of Fish and Game. "Today, it would be unusual to see 200." That dramatic decline has made the sage grouse—a large, pointy-tailed bird with showy mating habits—the subject of one of the biggest endangered species battles ever in the United States.