Newest UNESCO World Heritage Site: Vast Wetland Complex In Land-Locked Kazakhstan Protects World's Most Northerly Pink Flamingoes

Saryarka, it's called, this mosaic of wetlands and lakes in land-locked Kazakhstan that is one of UNESCO's newest world heritage sites. In the midst of the vast Central Asian steppe, Saryarka blankets Kazakhstan's Tengiz-Korgalzhyn and Naurzum Nature Reserves...

DNA Barcoding Reaches the Deep Sea

More than 600 new species of animals have been described since the 1977 discovery of chemosynthetic environments at deep-sea hydrothermal vents and hydrocarbon seeps, "yet biogeographical studies are hampered by a lack of information on these species' distributions," according to Shannon Johnson and Robert Vrijenhoek of the Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute in California and Anders Waren of the Swedish Museum of Natural History in Stockholm...

Ahoy, Matey: Here Be Pirates

Piracy on the high seas is on the rise, as recent events in the Indian Ocean off Somalia attest. There is little evidence, however, to support concerns by governments and international organizations that pirates and terrorists are beginning to collude with one another, according to a June 2008 RAND Corporation report, The Maritime Dimension of International Security: Terrorism, Piracy, and Challenges for the United States...

Nature's Investment Bank: Marine Protected Areas Result in Poverty Reduction

Ecotourism benefits both the environment of, and the people who live near, protected areas, according to results of the first study to analyze the link between biodiversity conservation initiatives and poverty reduction...

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