What big teeth you have, my dear! The better to eat insects with—and make one’s own ecological niche. Scientists have uncovered a new bat with stupendous canines in the rainforests of Lao PDR and Vietnam, aptly naming it Hypsugo dolichodon, or the long-toothed pipistrelle.
Dr. Douglas Sheil on forest conservation: “Combine democracy with modern communication technology and improved information access, and it seems that governments will increasingly be held accountable. So will conservation.”
A technology that uses discarded mobile phones to create a real-time alert system against logging and poaching will soon be deployed in the endangered rainforests of Central Africa.
Monitoring the populations of “uncontacted” tribes via Google Earth satellite images may be a noninvasive way help insure the survival of indigenous Brazilian villages.
Deforestation and fragmentation of forests in the Amazon help create tinderbox conditions for wildfires in remnant forests and contribute to rapid and widespread loss of trees during drought years, researchers say.