Year: 2008

Nearly 900 New Species Discovered in Smokies

NANCI BOMPEY
Published: 07.23.2008

ASHEVILLE, N.C. – A 10-year project designed to document all living creatures in Great Smoky Mountains National Park has led to the discovery of nearly 900 new species, researchers say.

The success of the 10-year-old All Taxa Biodiversity Inventory project, the largest natural history survey ever undertaken in the United States, was cited during a Senate subcommittee field hearing this week at the University of North Carolina at Asheville.

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“The main thing we found is that if you want to
conserve species, that policy might not be
compatible with carbon sequestration,” said
co-author Andrew Plantinga, a professor in the
Department of Agricultural and Resource Economics
at Oregon State University. “On the other hand,
if you want to get carbon out of the atmosphere,
it’s not clear that will be good for species.”
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Incentives For Carbon Sequestration May Not Protect Species

ScienceDaily (July 9, 2008) – Paying rural
landowners in Oregon’s Willamette Basin to
protect at-risk animals won’t necessarily mean
that their newly conserved trees and plants will
absorb more carbon from the atmosphere and vice
versa, a new study has found.

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” … The wolverine is facing two powerful foes:
climate change … and increased winter
recreation in the Rocky Mountains.”

” Š over the last seven years the Fish and
Wildlife Service has become a hostile gatekeeper,
denying refuge to species that desperately need
the government’s full protection. That must
change.”

The New York Times
July 19, 2008

Editorial
Another Species in Danger

Many animals are said to define true wilderness,
but the best candidate is arguably the wolverine.
The reason isn’t so much its legendary ferocity
or even the remoteness of its habitat. It’s the
fact that the wolverine is so intolerant of human
disturbance.

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