Rhett Ayers Butler
Before launching a monitoring program, practitioners are usually asked how data will be gathered, which indicators will be tracked, and how results will be analyzed. Less often, they are asked what the monitoring is meant to do. A recent paper led by Kate Helmstedt argues that this question should come first. Monitoring is most useful [Continue reading]
In 1991, botanists Calaway Dodson and Alwyn Gentry proposed that dozens of plant species known only from a deforested ridge in western Ecuador—Centinela—had likely gone extinct. The idea became known as the “Centinelan extinction hypothesis”: that clearing a single site could cause the immediate, global loss of narrowly distributed species. The claim was influential. It [Continue reading]