Environment

Courtesy of Dr. Richard Murphy

In June President George W. Bush designated the Northwestern Hawaiian Islands as a national monument, establishing the world's largest sweep of fully protected ocean. The Northwestern Hawaiian Islands National Monument spans 140,000 square miles of ocean, island, and reef. Bigger than the Great Barrier Reef Marine Park and larger than all U.S. national parks combined, the region harbors more than 7,000 species, including critically endangered Hawaiian monk seals. The national monument designation eventually will ban all commercial and recreational fishing within its borders.

"It's the best underwater piece of real estate in this country," says Marine Conservation Biology Institute president Elliott Norse. "With this one act, the United States put in a bid to become a world leader once again in marine conservation."

Megan Mansell Williams

Why are so many of Hawaii's birds on the brink of extinction?

Courtesy of Jill Greenberg

The future of the orangutan—already endangered—dimmed further with the release of a genetic study charting a steep population decline.

Conservation geneticist Benoît Goossens of Cardiff University in Wales and his colleagues gathered DNA from the feces and hair of 200 orangutans in the Kinabatangan Wildlife Sanctuary in Borneo. By examining bits of DNA called microsatellites, which mutate rapidly, Goossens was able to trace individual genetic differences back to a common ancestor and estimate the size of the orangutan population at different times in the past. The data reveal that the animals' numbers have plunged 95 percent over the past two centuries, coinciding with the arrival of settlers and the rapid clearing of forest habitats.

If the population continues to drop at current rates, the orang may be extinct in a few decades. Fatal inbreeding might occur even sooner, Goossens says: "If nothing is done in the near future, this could start in less than 25 years."

Kathy A. Svitil

Find out where the orangutan ranks among the world's most intelligent creatures.

Seven years after China's farmers began planting genetically engineered cotton—tailored specifically to resist bollworm infestation without chemical sprays—they are using just as much pesticide as they did before, researchers reported in July.

Genetically modified "Bt cotton" carries a bacterial protein that is toxic to the bollworm, the main cotton pest. In theory, that should significantly reduce the need for pesticide. But when Shenghui Wang, an economics doctoral student at Cornell University, interviewed farmers in China, she found the ones growing Bt cotton spending as much on pesticides as those who hadn't made the change.

The reason: Bt cotton was so successful initially that farmers cut back on pesticides; secondary pest populations then boomed, requiring renewed spraying. Wang's findings suggest that getting the full value from genetically modified crops may require more knowledge about how the system works—and better education for the farmers who use it.

Rabiya S. Tuma

The results of a decade-long experiment, published in June, indicate that biological diversity helps make ecosystems stable and productive. In the study, conducted in the Cedar Creek Natural History Area in Minnesota, researchers seeded large plots with one or a group of 2, 4, 8, or 16 plants chosen from 18 perennial grassland species. Over 10 years the scientists measured the amount of new growth (productivity) generated by all species in each plot, and the variability of that productivity (stability) from year to year.

Areas with more diverse kinds of plants were both more productive and more stable. "Plots with many species are much less prone to big dives in productivity from year to year," says Peter Reich, a coauthor of the study and a professor of ecology at the University of Minnesota. That is another reason for concern about the worldwide decline in biodiversity, he notes: "The loss of diversity is probably having adverse effects on stability and productivity and the ability of the ecosystem to respond to global climate change."

Nicholas Bakalar

Garlic mustard, a European weed introduced to the United States in 1868, is advancing rapidly through mature forests, crowding out local plants as it goes. In May John Klironomos, of the University of Guelph in Ontario, and his colleagues revealed what makes the plant so tenacious in its new setting.

Garlic mustard's weapon, Klironomos finds, is a chemical that kills the soil fungi that help many plants, including woody trees, obtain key nutrients. "Attacking the friend of your enemy can be just as effective as attacking your enemies themselves," Klironomos says. The chemical, which hasn't yet been identified, lingers in the soil for years, preventing competing seedlings from setting root.

Klironomos is now comparing the North American strains of the weed with native ones in Europe to determine why garlic mustard began aggressively expanding its range only in recent years. That information may explain why other nonnative species become invasive and may suggest new ways to tame them.

Rabiya S. Tuma