From the very first Nature Notes column in 2002, Zoe Dalton has brought readers an accessible yet informed look at this remarkable planet we call home. In “Canada Day Tirade,” she examines the challenges of preserving protected areas in the face of growing urbanization. This article originally appeared July 13, 2007, in issue 1526. Canada… Read more »
LEK and TEK: Invaluable Local Conservation Expertise–and the Ethical Complexities of Knowledge Sharing When thinking about the act of conservation, many of us tend to picture professionals (maybe biologists, ecologists, physical geographers) out in the field collecting data, processing samples, and crunching numbers in their labs, plugging info into computer simulation models, and coming up… Read more »
Succession: Evolving Understandings of Change in Natural Systems If there is one certain thing in a world characterized by uncertainty, it is that change is inevitable. Understandings of why and how change happens in the natural world (succession, as it is called in ecological circles) have themselves morphed over time. Once emphasizing predictability and stability,… Read more »
History vs. the Future: What’s Guiding Restoration These Days? Conferences are interesting things; so much information comes your way in such a short time that you have to wonder whether anything will stand out in your memory once It’s all over, or whether your brain will simply give up in the face of such an… Read more »
Canada Day Tirade: Sustainability in Canada’s First National Urban Park in Question I am still winding down from Canada Day festivities with my family, thinking back to the ice cream, pony rides and fairground activities of the day. But it isn’t only these sweet memories I find floating through my mind as the evening comes… Read more »
Management at Toronto’s Leslie Street Spit: Restoration or a Distant Relative? I recently had the chance to visit two sites in Toronto where ecological restoration work is being carried out–High Park’s black oak savannah and the Leslie Street Spit. The environmental management approaches at these sites are quite different, and provide an interesting opportunity for… Read more »
I know I’m not the only one who practically salivates when this warm weather starts to roll around. It’s finally time for those winter dreams to spring to life. Poring over seed catalogues, following the river’s winding path on the topo map, researching the best time to strike out on that section of the trail… Read more »
Dispersing from point A to point B, particularly when point A is hundreds of kilometres from point B, is probably not something one would normally consider plants to be capable of. Often when we think of mobility, we think in terms of the individual–the Canada goose migrating south, the white-tailed deer leaving a wooded area… Read more »
It’s difficult to estimate the number of vegetarians out there, given the flexible nature of many people’s dietary patterns. It is challenging to conduct effective cross-cultural research into the issue, such as research into vegetarianism in urban Canada versus rural India). Consider the question of what really constitutes vegetarianism. Is it complete avoidance of all… Read more »
A buzzword in the environmental literature for the last decade and a half, fragmentation refers to one of the most significant problems affecting natural environments today. A process in which large, continuous areas of particular types of ecosystem (for example, forests) are carved up into small remnant patches, fragmentation results in remaining natural areas that… Read more »