News Archives | Page 2 of 105 | Department of Environmental Conservation

Lisa Komoroske Co-Leads Team While Following Breeding Green Sea Turtles in Remote Islands of Brazil

August 1, 2019August 5, 2019 by Roxann Cormier Comment Closed

Courtesy of Office of News & Media Relations | UMass Amherst UMass Amherst ecologist, team will study reproductive and migration patterns July 24, 2019 Contact: Lisa Komoroske 413/545-2491 AMHERST, Mass. – The National Science Foundation this month announced that assistant professor of environmental conservation Lisa Komoroske will co-lead a four-year, $1.4 million, multi-institution grant to study how reproductive behaviors will influence the effects of climate change on green sea turtles (Chelonia mydas). Her team will spend months in the field at turtle nesting beaches on Fernando de Noronha, a marine reserve and UNESCO World Heritage Site composed of archipelago of 21 islands about 220 miles off the coast of Brazil. She and collaborators at Florida State and Oregon State universities will also work with the Brazil-based non-profit conservation organization PROJECTO TAMAR on the project. Komoroske and her colleagues believe this work will be the first comprehensive examination of resilience to environmental change among these turtles and will provide insights relevant to other temperature sex-determined species. Komoroske, an expert in the use...

UMass’ World Librarians Program launches new initiative in Kenya

July 29, 2019 by Roxann Cormier Comment Closed

Professor Charlie Schweik recently traveled to Nairobi Kenya to present at the Association for Research on Civil Society in Africa conference [1] on the World Librarians Program he developed along with SPP MPP 2019 graduate Pammy Eisner, other UMass students from across campus, UMass librarian Jeremy Smith, and collaborator Carl Meyer in Malawi. After describing the operational World Librarians program in Malawi -- which now supports 20 schools and libraries -- to the entire conference audience, Schweik was approached by conference attendees interested in expanding the World Librarians program into other African countries including Kenya, Nigeria, Uganda, Zambia and Rwanda. During this visit, a new World Librarians Kenya Chapter was formed and launched [picture from left and right]: Wachira Warukira, founder and executive of Waruks Productions; UMass Professor Charlie Schweik; Daniel Patrick Muigai of Waruks Productions; Verah Owiti of Sustainable Rural Initiatives (www.srikenya.org); Ezekiel Chemwor of Banda Primary School; and Gladys Nyambura of Kangubiri Girl's High School. The World Librarian Program is...

Adjunct Assistant Professor, Rodger Gwiazdowski Tracking Endangered Puritan Tiger Beetles

July 25, 2019July 25, 2019 by Roxann Cormier Comment Closed

Courtesy: Daily Hampshire Gazette Environment: The fight is on to save the last of the puritan tiger beetles By GRETA JOCHEM Staff Writer Published: 7/16/2019 3:49:04 PM NORTHAMPTON — Shoeless and armed with binoculars, Chris Davis and Neil Kapitulik look serious scanning every inch of Rainbow Beach on a recent morning. They aren’t looking for lost treasures, as they maneuver around people lounging in chairs and kids playing in the sand on the strip of land owned by the city of Northampton on the Connecticut River. Davis and Kapitulik, contractors for the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, were surveying the beach for puritan tiger beetles, an endangered species that lives in only a handful of places in the world, one of which is Rainbow Beach. Scientists have recently planted more there in an effort to boost their numbers. The beetles, about the size of a thumbnail, can only be found in the Chesapeake Bay in Maryland and in two areas along the Connecticut River — Rainbow Beach and...

Climate change comes to the breakfast table

July 16, 2019 by Alexander Schreyer Comment Closed

New England syrup production to dwindle with climate change Maple syrup production, one of New England’s cultural icons and a key economic component of the region, will shift northward during the next century due to rising temperatures that will drastically change the tapping season and reduce the quality of the sap, a new study says. The report, from researchers at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, the U.S. Geological Survey and colleagues in New Hampshire, Virginia, Indiana, Montana and Canada, finds that, by 2100, the region of maximum maple syrup flow will shift northward by hundreds of miles benefiting producers in Canada and lowering production and quality in the Eastern United States. The paper also says the maple syrup industry in most of New England, except for Northern Maine, is likely to drop by half by the end of this century due to changes in the climate. The industry supports thousands of producers and provides permanent and seasonal income streams to local farmsteads and indigenous communities who...

Ecologists find rare bush dogs in new northerly habitat

July 1, 2019 by Alexander Schreyer Comment Closed

UMass wildlife ecologists who are studying different conservation practices in the forests of Costa Rica recently made a startling discovery on a wildlife camera trap – wild bush dogs documented farther north than ever before and at the highest elevation. Doctoral student Carolina Saenz-Bolaños is in Costa Rica comparing land use, management techniques, their effects on species presence and abundance, and human attitudes in four different areas in the rugged Talamanca Mountains: a national park, an adjacent forest reserve, an indigenous territory and nearby unprotected areas. She and her advisor, professor of environmental conservation Todd Fuller at UMass Amherst, with others, report in an article in Tropical Conservation Science the new, repeated sightings of bush dogs (Speothos venaticus) on trailcams well outside the limit of their previously known range on the Costa Rica-Panama border. The dogs are native to South America but are considered rare and are very seldom seen even there, the two ecologists point out. Fuller says, “They aren’t supposed to be there, but Carolina’s work shows they really are, and they seem...