Today is Endangered Species Day!

The U.S. Fish and Wildlife service has declared May 20, 2011 Endangered Species Day to recognize the importance of protecting endangered species, to acknowledge the ongoing work of conservationists, and to commemorate the victories of the Endangered Species Act. Numerous species have been pulled from the brink of extinction thanks to the hard work of conservationists like those working with Paso Pacifico. 

Today, as we celebrate our successes, we must also take time to help the species whose futures are still uncertain.

Critically endangered hawksbill sea turtles and black-handed spider monkeys have slow maturation rates and low reproductive rates, which makes their vulnerability to poaching, habitat fragmentation and degradation especially dangerous. That is why Paso Pacifico is on the ground in Central America employing rangers to guard important sea turtle nesting sites, and working with local communities to improve habitat protection, among other life-saving projects.

If you’d like to learn more about what Paso Pacifico is doing to keep these animals from disappearing, please visit our website at http://pasopacifico.org/saving-wildli...


Remember, extinction is forever. 

The Flip Side of Tilapia

Yesterday, the New York Times reported on the costs and benefits of factory farmed tilapia and they zoomed in on Nicaragua.

Dr. McCrary has spent the past decade studying how a small, short-lived tilapia farm degraded Lake Apoyo in Nicaragua. “One small cage screwed up the entire lake — the entire lake!” he said of the farm, which existed from 1995 to 2000.  

Waste from the cages polluted the pristine ecosystem, and some tilapia escaped. An aquatic plant called charra, an important food for fish, disappeared, leaving the lake a wasteland. Today, some species of plants and fish are slowly recovering, but others are probably gone forever, said Dr. McCrary, who works for the Nicaraguan foundation FUNDECI.

Read the entire article, which reminds us that choices we make here affect ecosystems near and far.