ecology

Haiti: teetering on the brink of ecological catastrophe even before the earthquake

Sat, 01/16/2010 - 06:54

When I think of Haiti, the image that comes to mind is of the view I saw from the air, flying over the island of Hispaniola en route between Puerto Rico and Miami in 2003. A striking feature of that island was a sharp demarcatation between a verdant, apparently forested eastern half and a barren dirt-brown western half. Upon glimpsing that demarcation, I first wondered if we were maybe flying over a national park boundary - for that's where I'm used to seeing such a stark constrast back in India. It turned out that I was looking at an international boundary - between the nations of the Dominican Republic (the green east) and Haiti (the brown west). Here's a satellite image of this boundary, courtesy of the NASA/Goddard Space Flight Center - Scientific Visualization Studio:

via cnas.org

Using Chocolate to Exterminate Coyotes

Mon, 11/23/2009 - 13:23

Chocolate, like many of the things we eat regularly, is a potentially fatal poison, and so it should come as no surprise that a study by the unimaginatively-named John Johnston (at the USDA National Wildlife Research Center) shows that our favourite sweet could prove to be an effective pesticide, for use against coyotes [1].