In the Cerrado region of Brazil, four dogs trained to detect animal feces by scent are helping researchers monitor rare and threatened wildlife such as jaguar, tapir, giant anteater and maned wolf in and around Emas National Park, a protected area with the largest concentration of threatened species in Brazil.

The researchers analyze feces found by the dogs to learn about where and how the threatened mammals live. Data such as numbers, range, diet, hormonal stress, parasites and even genetic identity contribute to a study of how the mammals use environments inside and outside the park, especially on privately owned lands of the region.

The information helps develop conservation and development strategies that meet the needs of both the animals and local farmers. The dogs are rewarded for their good work with tennis balls to chase and chomp.

The residual herbicides commonly used in the production of corn and soybean are frequently detected in rivers, streams, and reservoirs at concentrations that exceed drinking water standards in areas where these crops are extensively grown.

When these bodies of water are used as sources of drinking water this contamination can lead to increased treatment costs or a need to seek alternative sources of supply. Additionally, these herbicides can have negative effects on aquatic ecosystems at concentrations well below their drinking water standards.

When genetically modified, herbicide-tolerant, corn and soybean became commercially available in the 1990s it became possible to replace some of the problematic residual herbicides with strongly sorbed, short half-life, contact herbicides that may be more environmentally benign. By 2004 almost 90% of the soybean grown in the US was genetically modified for tolerance to the contact herbicide glyphosate (Roundup), which is currently the most widely used herbicide in the world.

The government of Cameroon has created the Kagwene Gorilla Sanctuary, the world’s first sanctuary exclusively for the Cross River gorilla, the world’s rarest kind of great ape.

“The creation of this sanctuary is the fruit of many years of work in helping to protect the world’s rarest gorilla subspecies,” said Dr. Roger Fotso, Director of the Wildlife Conservation Society’s Cameroon Program, which worked in tandem with the Cameroon Ministry of Forestry and Wildlife in laying the groundwork for the sanctuary.

Classified as Critically Endangered by IUCN’s Red List, the Cross River gorilla is the rarest of the four subspecies of gorilla. The entire population numbers under 300 individuals across its entire range, which consists of 11 scattered sites in Cameroon and Nigeria.

U.S. Forest Service scientists believe an Oregon State University graduate student working on a cooperative project with the agency’s Pacific Southwest Research station on the Tahoe National Forest has photographed a wolverine, an animal whose presence has not been confirmed in California since the 1920s.

Katie Moriarty, a wildlife biology student, was conducting research on another carnivore called the American marten when a remote-controlled camera she set photographed the animal on February 28, 2008. Forest Service scientists who are experts at detecting rare carnivores believe the photographed animal is a wolverine.

The North American wolverine is the largest member of the weasel family. Adult males weigh 26 to 40 pounds, while females are 17 to 26 pounds. It resembles a small bear, with a bushy tail and broad head. Its diet includes carrion, small animals, birds, insects and berries.

One thing has long been clear. Not thinning forests has been a disaster for the environment. Groups normally at loggerheads have reached a consensus on responsible forest management and it identifies the potential volume of wood resources available from more than 2 million acres of Arizona forests, representing the first major agreement among groups typically at odds over the issue of forest thinning.

The “Wood Supply Analysis” report identifies a potential supply of up to 850 million cubic feet of wood and 8 million tons of biomass from branches and timber residue for such commercial uses as pallets, firewood, poles, lumber, mulch and stove pellets.

Turning just one Sumatran province's forests and peat swamps into pulpwood and palm oil plantations is generating more annual greenhouse gas emissions than the Netherlands and rapidly driving the province's elephants into extinction, a new study by WWF and partners has found.

The study found that in central Sumatra's Riau Province nearly 10.5 million acres of tropical forests and peat swamp have been cleared in the last 25 years. Forest loss and degradation and peat decomposition and fires are behind average annual carbon emissions equivalent to 122 percent of the Netherlands total annual emissions, 58 percent of Australia's annual emissions, 39 percent of annual UK emissions and 26 percent of annual German emissions.

“Think globally, act locally” makes for a nice bumper sticker — but is it an effective policy for coping with global climate change? Can local actions make a difference in a process principally driven by worldwide trends?

The short answer is “no,” according to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. We cannot do much locally to lessen the effects of global drivers; therefore, our local policies must focus on adaptation.

Results from field research supported by Earthwatch, the international environmental charity, will help scientists predict threats to wildlife should climate change result in a sea level rise in the Baltic.

During the six year research programme, coordinated by Earthwatch scientists Drs. Chris Joyce and Niall Burnside (University of Brighton), and Elle Puurmann (NGO Läänerannik), monitoring stations were installed in Vormsi Island, Silma Nature Reserve and Matsalu National Park, some of the best coastal wetlands in Estonia for nature conservation. The stations’ data loggers recorded water levels and soil moisture. Bird life was also recorded at fixed locations.

By any measure, Dr. Alan Grainger, Senior Lecturer in Geography at the University of Leeds, is an internationally-renowned expert on tropical deforestation. He is the author of numerous scientific papers since 1978 and a book, Controlling Tropical Deforestation, published in 1993. He gained his doctorate the University of Oxford in 1987 for producing the world's first global computer simulation model of the tropical forests.

Yet all that will be called into question because he states in a study published in the Proceedings of the US National Academy of Sciences that claims about tropical forests declining are not backed up by evidence.

"Every few years we get a new estimate of the annual rate of tropical deforestation,” said Dr Grainger. “They always seem to show that these marvellous forests have only a short time left. Unfortunately, everybody assumes that deforestation is happening and fails to look at the bigger picture – what is happening to forest area as a whole.”

The loss of deep-sea species poses a severe threat to the future of the oceans, suggests a new report in Current Biology. In a global-scale study, the researchers found some of the first evidence that the health of the deep sea, as measured by the rate of critical ecosystem processes, increases exponentially with the diversity of species living there.

“For the first time, we have demonstrated that deep-sea ecosystem functioning is closely dependent upon the number of species inhabiting the ocean floor,” said Roberto Danovaro of the Polytechnic University of Marche, in Italy. “This shows that we need to preserve biodiversity, and especially deep-sea biodiversity, because otherwise the negative consequences could be unprecedented. We must care about species that are far from us and [essentially] invisible.”