Colombia has made impressive progress in declaring a large part of its Amazon rain forest protected for conservation. But there's another rain forest in Colombia, the Chocó, on the Pacific side of the country. This forest teems with even more species than in the Amazon forest, but it is not as well protected. Conservation biologist Stuart Pimm recently visited the region to see the biodiversity for himself.

By Stuart L. Pimm
Special contributor to NatGeo News Watch

Ten days ago I was in Colombia with my Colombian graduate student German Forero Medina, about to give a keynote address on REDD--Reduced Emissions from Deforestation and forest Degradation -- the subject now uppermost in the minds of those of us who care about biodiversity. (Read about REDD on my earlier blog on NatGeo News Watch.)

I wasn't going to go that far without taking time to visit one of the most diverse rain forests on Earth--the Chocó, along the country's Pacific Slope.

Colombia has more than one rain forest. The most familiar is the Amazon.

This has been a good few weeks for the Amazon, so that news first.

Just over a week ago, Brazil's President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva announced that only 7,000 square kilometres (2,700 square miles) of the Brazilian Amazon were cleared in the 12 months to August 2009. [NatGeo News Watch: Amazon deforestation slows as Brazil tightens prevention.]

That's by far the lowest rate since the country's National Institute for Space Research started using satellite imagery to monitor forest losses.

Neighbouring Colombia has much less of the Amazon compared to Brazil, but it too has been losing forest cover.

At the International Forum on Biodiversity and Climate Change on the November 6, Environment Minister Carlos Costa told his audience in Bogotá: "It is important for the world to know that the Colombian Amazon is for conservation only." I was in the audience.

The Colombian government was making more than bold statements. At the Protected Areas Conference and on the Biodiversity Forum two weeks earlier (October 26, also in Bogotá), the country announced the creation of the Yaigoyé Apaporis National Par --an area of over 1,000,000 hectares (4,000 square miles) in the Amazon close to the equator.

Even before that addition, Colombia had exceeded the targets for conservation it had agreed to meet by signing the Convention on Biological Diversity. Signers agreed to set aside 10 percent of their land for protected areas by 2010.

With this latest addition, Colombia has protected 12.5 million hectares of its country--about 49,000 square miles, or 11 percent of the country-- an area a little smaller than the State of Florida. Some 70 percent of the protected land is in the Amazon.

Here's the problem that had me at the second meeting--and German Forero Medina at both meetings: Colombia is spectacularly rich in biodiversity. (Ask any birdwatcher. Colombia has nearly 1,900 species, more than any other country and 19 percent of the world's total. It has a similar excess of mammals and amphibians.)

But rich in species though the Amazon might be, it's Colombia's other forests that have even more species--and they are not been given the same protection. German and I were in Colombia to argue for more reserves outside Colombia's Amazon.

Conservation biologist Stuart L. Pimm visits Colombia's Chocó rain forest. There Jorge Orejuela, director of the Cali Botanic Garden and an expert on the Chocó's birds and orchids, tells Pimm about the remarkable orchids and other species in one of Earth's biodiversity "hotspots."

Video by Stuart L. Pimm

One of those regions, the Chocó was where I headed after the meeting. The old road from Cali to Buenaventura is "the best area in the world for seeing a rich diversity of birds," according to Steven Hilty and William Brown, authors of the Birds of Colombia.

How could I resist? This is one of 25 "biodiversity hotspots"--places that my Duke University colleague Professor Norman Myers and colleagues showed contained half of all the variety of life on Earth--in about 10 percent of the land surface. By definition, hotspots are also places where there's been large losses of habitats.

22 feet of rain a year

Resist? Well, easily, it happens. Dripping wet mountain forest, some areas getting 7 metres (22 feet) of rain each year sounds wonderful, but tragically, it's been a war zone. Coca grows well here. The consequence of U.S. citizens being unable to "just say no" to cocaine have played havoc with Colombia and scarred the lives of millions of its people. Armed conflict and anti-government guerrillas had been active in the Chocó.

But all my Colombian friends were cautiously optimistic about the reduction in violence in the last few years. So I set off with Jorge Orejuela, an old friend with whom I shared a house in graduate school decades ago.

Jorge won the prestigious National Geographic/Buffett Award for Leadership in Conservation in 2007. He's the director of the Cali Botanic Garden and an expert on the Chocó's birds and orchids. And he won the prize for his efforts to protect the Chocó's forest.

Photo of orchid Dracula wallisii by Luis Mazariegos

In the rain, our 4x4 slipped and slid down the narrow dirt road, from Cali to the coast. Then we turned into the watershed of a large reservoir, showing our permits to the Colombian military who guard the area.

The next morning the rain let up. Jorge spotted orchids everywhere--many were small and I missed them. Close up, they were lovely.

"Here's a branch covered with orchids." Jorge pointed them out. "There's an orchid in the genus Pleurothallis--perhaps it's a new species...There are a hundred or more new species being described every couple of years from this genus in Colombia and Ecuador."

Video still by Stuart L. Pimm

Later, standing in the middle of a small river, looking at its bank covered in showy Sobralia orchids, Jorge continued, "Biodiversity here is unbelievable. Along this gradient from the Andes to the lowlands, we may have 1,500 species of butterflies and 800 bird species." (That's half as many again as birds that nest in all of Europe and North Africa.) "Orchids--perhaps 1,000 species."

"There's high human pressure on this area. My work that was highlighted by National Geographic was protecting areas that, had they been destroyed, the endemic species--those that we found only within them--would have been lost for ever."

Photo of orchid D. syndactyla by Luis Mazariegos

Just how many species are found only in these areas, I wondered. "And how many species are still unknown to science here," I asked Jorge.

"It's hard to tell," he said. "In one area, not knowing anything about orchids, we collected 400 species--and that was not the only thing I had to do. This was in an area of only 30 square kilometres." (About 12 square miles).

"Easily 20 percent of those species were new to science...Many of those are endangered--they are rare and found only in those particular places."

Professor Stuart L. Pimm is a conservation biologist at Duke University, North Carolina. A former member of the National Geographic Committee for Research and Exploration, Pimm is the author of dozens of books and research papers, including the book "The World According to Pimm: A Scientist Audits the Earth."

Read earlier blog posts by Stuart Pimm>>

Conservation biologist Stuart Pimm has a long and brilliant career as a scientist. Author of numerous research papers and books, he has given lectures in distinguished forums across the world. Yet he is never happier than as a teacher and mentor.

In this blog entry Pimm addresses what it takes to be a young explorer in the field, interviewing some of his protégés about the high and low points. He finds that much of the excitement and challenges of getting started have not changed over the past forty years. It all begins with a willingness to pay your dues.

By Stuart L. Pimm
Special Contributor to NatGeo News Watch

The Seven Stars is not the oldest pub in Derby, England.  Nearby, the Dophin dates from 1580--a hundred years earlier.  But in the late 1960s, the Seven Stars served draft Newcastle Brown ale. It was worth hitchhiking home to Derby from Oxford at the weekend. Beer in the south of England was terrible.

As I elbowed my way to the bar, a vaguely familiar face introduced himself, a conversation ensued, and seven months later, I drove with him and ten others overland to Afghanistan.

My career as an explorer had begun.

That it almost ended that summer--I came back so sick that I had to miss a year of university--is another story.

The story I write here is how one starts a career in exploration--and in this century, rather than in the last one, when I started mine.

So I turned to three remarkable young explorers:  Dr. Luke Dollar is a National Geographic Society Emerging Explorer--and a former student of mine. The other two are undergraduates at Duke--Varsha Vijay and Ciara Wirth.

Video by Stuart L. Pimm

"How did you get started," I asked them.

Luke was first.  "I spent three years cleaning up lemur poop at the Duke Lemur Center. I ingratiated myself in every way with Professor Patricia Wright and eventually was invited to do equally menial stuff in Madagascar."  (Like me, Pat is a former member of the National Geographic Committee for Research and Exploration.)

"I was the first up, the last down, and at the end of the day the dirtiest, most tired, most sweaty of everyone."
From that experience, Luke returned year-after-year, working first for Pat, then on his own, with the island's largest predator--the fossa.

Photo courtesy of Luke Dollar

Almost every year, Luke takes teams to his study sites with Earthwatch--an organization which people pay to do field research for a couple of weeks each northern summer.

Each year, Luke needs the same kind of assistance that Pat needed--someone who is prepared to start by doing the very basic stuff in the field and what is often quite numbing organization to get there.

(I remembered from the first expedition I led, how much time we spent on calculating how many rolls of toilet paper we'd need for 14 people in the field for several months. We didn't think it would be easy to buy in Afghanistan.)

Photo by Stuart L. Pimm

Varsha got her start helping Luke for one summer in Madagascar.

Then came Ecuador. This was a chance to work with Ciara Wirth, other students from Duke, and Save America's Forests. Varsha did not hesitate. 

Ciara and Varsha worked with Waorani Indians in a remote part of the Amazon.

I told them: "You fly to Quito, then fly across the Andes into the Amazon lowlands, then take a bus for a day -- or longer if it gets stuck in the mud -- then two days by canoe."

Photo by Stuart L. Pimm

"Madagascar, the Amazon ... two of the most amazing places on Earth!  How could I say no?"  Varsha replied.  And after the first summer there, she took a year off from Duke to continue her work in the field.  Ciara came back for a second summer too.

"What were the high points and what were the low points?" I asked them.

"Food"--was near the top of Varsha's list. "Growing up in a Hindu family, we did not eat meat. Going from that to eating monkey parts and every kind of rodent was a challenge." 

And the language. Ciara had traveled extensively with her very adventurous parents and spoke Spanish. Varsha did not. Remarkably, both have learned the language of the Woarani Indians.

Initially, they did so in a remarkable way--by talking over Skype in the evenings whenever their Woarani guide, Manuela, came into Puyo and would log onto the computer in an Internet café. The transition from rain forest nomad to using the latest communications technology happens within a generation.

Photo courtesy of Varsha Vijay

"How did you make friends?"

Varsha's story was that she regularly joined the women in the traditional villages in making chica--manioc "beer." "You chew the manioc for a few minutes, spit it back into the bowl, grab another mouthful, and start chewing again." And yes, it's a communal bowl.

"So what went wrong?" All of us have stories of bad experiences.

Ciara's project depending on mapping--and the essential tools were the GPS units she had taken with her. She left them in a taxi--threatening the viability of the entire project.

After a frantic night and a visit to the police station--" a scary place at night"--they found the taxi and within hours were on their way.

When they arrived, "it was one of the greatest experiences Varhsa and I had the entire summer--a really beautiful community," Ciara said.

Through all the challenges, all the things that go wrong, Luke and Varsha were all excited about going back into the field.  And Ciara is there now, working in Africa.

Luke's final advice:  "Keep your mind open--and be prepared for anything." 

Professor Stuart L. Pimm is a conservation biologist at Duke University, North Carolina. A former member of the National Geographic Committee for Research and Exploration, Pimm is the author of dozens of books and research papers, including the book "The World According to Pimm: A Scientist Audits the Earth."

Read earlier blog posts by Stuart Pimm>>

Swapping field clothes for a suit and tie, conservation biologist Stuart Pimm attended a United Nations event last week on forests and climate change. He was among world leaders and distinguished thinkers and activists invited to publicly express their commitment and support for the role of forests as an option to mitigate the emissions of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere.

The forest event followed the Summit on Climate Change, convened at the UN a day earlier "to mobilize political will and strengthen momentum for a fair, effective, and ambitious climate deal" in Copenhagen this December.

Officials from almost every country will gather in Copenhagen to try to agree a new climate treaty as a successor to the Kyoto Protocol, the first phase of which expires in 2012. The conference, also known as COP15, is widely regarded as a critical opportunity for humanity to try to get a grip on the problem of climate change caused by greenhouse gas emissions into the atmosphere.

The meeting on Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation in Developing Countries (REDD) convened by Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon at the United Nations, New York.

Photo courtesy United Nations

By Stuart L. Pimm
Special Contributor to NatGeo News Watch

United Nations, New York--September 23, 2009, 5 a.m. Another morning when the alarm goes off while it's still very dark. When I dress, it's not my boots and field khakis that I put on, but a white shirt, fumbling at this early hour with the cufflinks, and a charcoal grey suit.

The flight to New York is just over an hour. Then a taxi. It can't get me very close to my destination. First, I see what must be every policeman in the city, then the traffic slows to a crawl, then a standstill, and I continue my journey on foot.

Different kind of jungle

This morning I'm off to a different kind of "jungle" and it requires different field clothes. The United Nations General Assembly is in session and I have an invitation to watch a "high level event."

What happens here may decide whether the world's forests, their biodiversity, and their indigenous peoples, have a future.

The last few blocks have the feel of a street fair. Lots of noisy people waving posters, shouting slogans--and one, carrying a placard reading simply "Indict him!", nearly knocks me over.

I wonder who the "him" is, thinking there might be 192 national leaders to choose from, then remember that some would be "her," so that narrows the field just a bit.

Finally, I reach the right street corner, see someone holding a small sign "REDD," and, in short order, I am whisked through security into the relative tranquility of the UN building.

REDD is for "Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation." It is a UN program that seeks to generate income for countries that provide sustainable management of forests while also contributing to important reductions in greenhouse gas emissions.

There's a lot of science involved and the world's forests are at stake. I worry: will this meeting of the world's top politicians--its presidents and prime ministers--have got the message?

Burning tropical forests, like this in southern Venezuela, contribute one fifth of all the greenhouse gasses to the atmosphere due to human activity--more that all the emissions from Europe.

Photo by Stuart L. Pimm

The United Nations Secretary-General, Ban Ki-moon, introduces the proceedings. He recognizes the commitment to the meeting--more than 85 governments are represented in the room, 18 of them by their heads of state.

Then he nails the key points:

• Deforestation causes 20 percent of the emissions of global greenhouse gases.
• Hundreds of million of mostly poor people live in forests and depend on the ecosystem services they provide.
• Forests harbor the greatest share of the planet's biodiversity.

Some background: A total of 183 countries have signed and ratified the Kyoto Protocol--an agreement to reduce the greenhouse gases that are disrupting the planet.

People often think that this is entirely a problem for industrial nations, such as the U.S., European countries, Japan, and so on. If so, the list of top emitters would surprise: after China and the U.S., come Brazil and Indonesia.

Brazil and Indonesia get to that position because of their high rates of deforestation.

Guyana in South America still has most of its forests and, with the areas of adjacent Venezuela (seen here) and northern Brazil constituting one of the largest remaining blocks of tropical forest.

Photo by Stuart L. Pimm

Under the Kyoto Protocol, developing countries cannot receive credit for the benefits their forests provide as the major stores of global carbon. REDD aims to change that.

Brazil's neighbor, Guyana, still has most of its forests. Its president, Bharrat Jagdeo, gave the event's most forceful presentation. "We all profess to know how important forests are," he started, then asked why REDD hadn't been given the attention of other solutions. "We need to correct that this afternoon."

Certainly, there were technical problems, he noted, but there are also technical problems with alternatives such as employing renewable energy. He felt that countries were focusing too much on REDD's difficulties. "This is the lowest-cost [greenhouse gas] abatement solution," he said. 

Indeed, studies done by the Union of Concerned Scientists show that about U.S. $25 billion in forest conservation would prevent a billion tons of carbon going into the atmosphere.

Stopping deforestation is a bargain compared to other solutions.

Amazon sunrise: tropical forests are home to 70 percent of the planet's biodiversity.

Photo by Stuart L. Pimm 

From the point of view of the developed world, Sweden's prime minister, Fredrik Reinfeldt, spoke on behalf of the European Union. He too started with the importance of forests--home to "70 percent of the world's biodiversity."

Deforestation was running at "13 million hectares [50,000 square miles] per year between 2000 and 2005," Reinfeldt said. Unless the world's nations could reduce that by half by 2020, there would be no way to keep the planet from warming at least two degrees, he warned.

U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton did not attend. Neither did British Prime Minister Gordon Brown. But a British official read Brown's statement. Yes, public funding was vital, the British agreed, but so too was the private sector who could use carbon markets to offset their emissions. (Companies could compensate for their carbon emissions by investing in carbon-trapping opportunities like forests.) 

With colleagues, I have spent a career documenting forest-loss and the species extinctions it causes. Would this science get onto the political agenda? I need not have worried. It has.

But would the broad international agreements on the science be enough to effect real change?

"The core point is will there be adequate funds to do this?"

While president Jagdeo applauded Norway's financial commitments and Brazil's efforts to reduce deforestation, his main point was emphatic: "the core point is will there be adequate funds to do this?" Can enough money be raised through carbin markets and other global sources to make forest conservaton sustainable?

I knew from previous events, drinks and canapés would follow. From the windowless meeting chamber, we trouped into a lounge with an impressive view overlooking the river.

I wasn't just there for the snacks, for there were short talks by two women who I have long admired, but never met.

Wangari Maathai is a Nobel Peace Prize laureate, rewarded for her work in environmental conservation, women's rights and--so relevant to the day's events--planting trees.

Victoria Tauli-Corpuz chairs the UN Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues. She played a central role is getting the UN to adopt the Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples.

Photos by Stuart L. Pimm

Yes, REDD is about billions of tons of carbon. And about millions of species. Maathai and Tauli-Corpuz understood that. But their unique and powerful message is that REDD is about people--whose lives and whose homes are destroyed when we clear the world's forests.

Professor Stuart L. Pimm is a conservation biologist at Duke University, North Carolina. A former member of the National Geographic Committee for Research and Exploration, Pimm is the author of dozens of books and research papers, including the book "The World According to Pimm: A Scientist Audits the Earth."

Read earlier blog posts by Stuart Pimm>>

Thirty years ago, Dr. Tom Lovejoy, the chairman of National Geographic's Conservation Trust, set up a unique experiment to monitor biodiversity in Brazil. It's to be repeated in Borneo, conservation biologist Stuart Pimm reports from Borneo for Nat Geo News Watch.

Photo of oil palm plantation by Stuart Pimm

By Stuart L. Pimm
Special Contributor to NatGeo News Watch

Borneo, Malaysia--The flight from Kota Kinabalu to Lahad Datu across the northern end of the island of Borneo passes south of Mount Kinabalu--at 4,000 metres (13,400 feet) the tallest mountain in southeast Asia. Above it, and towering above us, is a massive thundercloud, threateningly black with its edges backlit by sunlight.

Such storms bring part of the three meters (120 inches) of rain that makes this tropical forest grow.

But exactly the same conditions make the land below a perfect place for oil palms, a crop that has rapidly become the dominant land use in much of southeast Asia. Princeton University ecologists Lian Pin Koh and David Wilcove showed in a paper in Conservation Letters last year that there are now more then 13 million hectares (52,00 square miles) of oil palm.

As we land in Lahad Datu, the land below us is mostly oil palm.

Photo of oil palm fruits on the way to market by Stuart Pimm

Like most monocultures--cropland where only one species is planted--these oil palm plantations are home to very few species.

Many conservation biologists view the expansion of oil palm as one of the greatest threats to biodiversity. And Borneo is a country that teems with species of plants and animals. (See Pimm's related story "An Inordinate Passion for Moths."

Experiences elsewhere in the world tell us that some forest will remain after clearing for crops and cattle grazing.

Photo of cattle grazing in a Brazilian clearing by Stuart Pimm

It was the threat posed by cattle-grazing--and the need to understand how many species would remain in small fragments--that led Lovejoy and Brazilian colleagues to create an extraordinary experiment in the middle of the Amazon forest thirty years ago.

It's known as the BDFFP--the Biological Dynamics of Forest Fragments Project.

Lovejoy holds the Biodiversity Chair at the Heinz Center in Washington D.C. and also chairs National Geographic's Conservation Trust.

The experiment, north of Manaus, used the forest clearing for cattle ranching to establish a set of plots--of one hectare (roughly 100 by 100 yards), 10 hectares, and 100 hectares. Some control plots of the same size were marked out in forest that would remain intact.

Photo of forest fragments in Brazil by Stuart Pimm

Lovejoy and his team then surveyed the plots for the species they contained and watched, over the years, how they disappeared. "Many and quickly" was the simple answer, from work done with Tom by my former graduate student Gonçalo Ferraz. "We found that even in the largest fragments, many bird species were missing within a decade or so," Ferraz told me. "The majority of the birds were gone from the smaller fragments in a matter of a few years."

Photo of land cleared at the site of Lovejoy's experiment by Stuart Pimm

Would the same be true for forest fragments in Borneo that would be surrounded by oil palm plantations?

That was the question of a new experiment Dr. Robert Ewers, of Imperial College London, explained to me when I met him earlier this year. We sat in the dingy bar at Silwood Park where faculty and research students have crowded on Friday evenings for decades to discuss ecology's latest ideas. It seemed a long way from Borneo's rainforest.

Ewers had lots of good ideas to test--and, of course, the experiences and hindsight of what happened in Brazil. Would such species as orangutans and large birds, such as Borneo's many species of hornbill be able to survive? I thought not, on the basis of what we'd learned in Brazil.

Photos of black hornbill (above) and orangutan (below) in Borneo by Stuart Pimm

The simple comparison of Brazil and Borneo was going to be important -- a means to decide whether we really understood what had happened in Brazil and why.

I was looking forward to being in Borneo. When I finally got there, I talked to Dr. Glenn Reynolds, the director of the Royal Society's Southeast Asia Rainforest Research Programme. The program has been based at the Danum Valley Field Centre since 1985.

He told me that they were about to establish a large forest fragmentation program. Large portions of forest will be planted in oil palm, but some areas will be kept as forest, however.

The sizes of those fragments will be the same as those in Brazil's Biological Dynamics of Forest Fragments Project.

Working with their local partners in Borneo, the Sabah Foundation, researchers will spend two years surveying the areas for their biodiversity before the forest is cleared. This will establish the baseline.

Then after fragmentation, teams will follow the change.

Photo of forest cleared for cattle pasture in Brazil by Stuart Pimm

Deciding how large fragments were needed to protect different kinds of animals and plants provided very important advice to managers in Brazil. We now knew that forest fragments had to be large enough if they were to protect biodiversity.

But there were many ecological variables that the Brazil project had not measured. The new experiments in Borneo would give scientists a chance to address so many questions they wished the Brazil project had tested.

"What will you measure?" I asked Reynolds. "Beetles, moths, butterflies--birds certainly," he explained. "But one of the strategic aims of this project is to set up a platform, so that scientists in different disciplines from Malaysia and around the world can work on this problem."

Reynolds plans were ambitious--but then there are so many things we need to know about what happens as humanity shrinks Earth's tropical forests.

Watch Stuart Pimm's video report and interview with Glenn Reynolds:

Professor Stuart L. Pimm is a conservation biologist at Duke University, North Carolina. A former member of the National Geographic Committee for Research and Exploration, Pimm is the author of dozens of books and research papers, including the book "The World According to Pimm: A Scientist Audits the Earth."

Photo Brazilian rain forest by Stuart Pimm

Read earlier blog posts by Stuart Pimm:

An Inordinate Passion for Moths

Florida Panther Fights for Survival Again--This Time in Washington D.C.

Many Mammal Migrations Are at Risk of Extinction, Research Finds

Related NatGeo News Watch content:

Support for Sustainable Palm Oil Gains Traction in China

The Florida panther has made a dramatic recovery. Whether it will continue to survive now depends on whether we protect its shrinking habitat.

Photo by Stuart L. Pimm

By Stuart L. Pimm
Special Contributor to NatGeo News Watch

There's a small plane circling me a thousand feet up and its annoying noise makes it difficult for me to hear the Cape Sable sparrows I'm trying to census for my research. On these April mornings at sunrise, there's usually nothing but bird songs here in the middle of the Everglades.

Then I understand why the plane is there: its crew are tracking a Florida panther carrying a transmitter and the animal must be close to me. What a thrill! This big cat almost went extinct, and did go extinct in Everglades National Park. It's presence near me is wonderful---it's back, testimony to a very successful and unusual conservation effort.

Whether the panther can survive in the long term is now the subject of a battle over a key provision of the law that has kept it alive--the Endangered Species Act.

NGS illustration of Florida panther by Walter A. Weber

Florida panthers once occurred across the southeastern U.S., but their range shrank as human settlement expanded. By the time it was declared a Federally Endangered species in 1967, only a few individuals remained in southwest Florida.

With such few individuals, soon every cat was related to each other. And with inbreeding came a variety of genetic problems that reduced the animals' ability to reproduce. "The only solution was to bring in 'new blood'--female panthers from Texas," Sonny Bass of Everglades National Park told me. "It was very controversial, but it worked very well indeed."

Bass and colleagues released eight Texas females in 1995. "Five bred, and now most of the panthers have a Texas ancestor," Bass said. Their offspring spread more widely and recolonized Everglades National Park, including the animal near me as I did my survey. [Read the National Geographic News story about this: Texas Cats Help Triple Florida Panther Population.]

Bass should know. "In the early days of my panther work, I was in a small plane seven days a week tracking animals," he said. Before and after the Texas introductions there was a major effort to find and radio-collar every cat and to follow its movements.

Photo courtesy FWS

A lot of panthers--especially males--die on roads and at night. Five have been killed on the roads this year, a couple of dozen in each of 2007 and 2008.

As cats disperse looking for new territories they cross roads. Nothing in their evolution prepares them for cars traveling at high speed.

While some of the cats moved back into the National Park, most live in the western Everglades, in the region known as Big Cypress. They are generally more wooded.

Panthers in Immediate Jeopardy

It's these cats that are in immediate jeopardy. There are many new towns planned--one to be called "Big Cypress"--part of the sprawl of new housing developers plan to build inland from Florida's southwest coast.

Joe Browder is the long-term environmental leader who brought the land now called Big Cypress National Preserve back into the U.S. National Park system. He explained to me the reason why Sierra Club, Conservancy of Southwest Florida, and other groups have recently asked the Secretary of the Interior to assure that the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service does not reject the groups' petition to designate key areas in southwestern Florida as "critical habitat" under the Endangered Species Act.

"Secretary of Interior Salazar should designate critical habitat for the panther because designation not only defines those areas needed for the species to survive, but also provides some later opportunity to discourage developers from building in the wrong places. Designation is an essential first step to make the planning process effective," Browder told me.

"Without designation, there's a much higher probability that developers will build their roads and cities on lands the panthers need, so the open space in the planned development may make the real estate more attractive, but won't protect the panther from traffic deaths and loss of prey."

    "To escape extinction, the panther needs the right lands protected."

As someone who studies species extinction--and how to prevent them--I share Browder's concerns. The panthers in south Florida have had a miraculous initial recovery, with the help of some sexy Texans. But to escape extinction the panther needs the right lands protected, something that can be done and still leave developers room to build new communities.

The Florida panther is now the only large cat east of the Mississippi. The wild areas of Florida would be somehow just so much tamer were the last one to die in a head-on collision with a car on a Federal highway.

Professor Stuart L. Pimm is a conservation biologist at Duke University, North Carolina. A former member of the National Geographic Committee for Research and Exploration, Pimm is the author of dozens of books and research papers, including the book "The World According to Pimm: A Scientist Audits the Earth."

Earlier NatGeo News Watch posting by Stuart Pimm:

Many Mammal Migrations Are at Risk of Extinction, Research Finds

Additional information about the Florida panther:

The Genetic Rescue of the Florida Panther (Stuart Pimm's research)

Florida Panther Recovery Plan (U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service)

Florida Panther National Wildlife Refuge (FWS)

Everglades National Park

Florida Panther Net  (Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission)

Florida Panther (National Wildlife Federation)

The Florida Panther Society

The Florida State Animal: Florida Panther

Florida Panther (Defenders of Wildlife)

Florida panther poster courtesy FWS

The recipient of numerous prizes, including the 2006 Heineken Prize for Environmental Sciences, Pimm has published scores of scientific papers and written a number of books, including "The World According to Pimm: a Scientist Audits the Earth" (McGraw Hill, New York, 2001).

Pimm was also until recently a member of the National geographic Society's Committee for Research and Exploration, which is how I came to travel with him to different parts of the world. I will always have vivid memories of early morning bird walks with Stuart Pimm in Madagascar and Honduras--and now at the Indiana Dunes National Lakeshore, where he led two bird walks during the bioblitz, a 24-hour species census that ended at midday today.

Accompanying Pimm on a bird walk involves a lot more than hearing about the birds in front of you. It's a lecture about birdbehavior and habitat and the wider context of the local ecology.

At the end of the bird walk this morning--in which we heard much about not only the birds we encountered (mallards, red-wing blackbirds, swifts, swallows, terns, and more), but also got into a wider discussion about the sexual dimorphism of peacocks and other birds--I asked Pimm if he would share his tips about how to go about birding. Watch the video to hear what he said:

Video and photo by David Braun