Stuart Pimm
Oil and gas development does not have to destroy the Amazon
Posted by Stuart Pimm on May 16, 2013 NGS Grantee, Dr. Clinton Jenkins stands amid felled trees in Peru. Logging is a familiar threat to the Amazon, but not the only one. When one thinks of the Amazon, it is usually of lush rainforests or indigenous people living amongst a wild landscape. Certainly, that is part of the Amazon’s story, but there is…
LION LIGHTS — a home grown solution to saving lions and livestock
Posted by Stuart Pimm on May 27, 2012 Paula Kahumbu, National Geographic grantee and Buffet Prize winner, writes about an innovative solution to save lions. It’s originator is 13 year old Richard Turere. Family portrait of lioness and her cubs, Nairobi National Park, Stuart Pimm. Lions, once ubiquitous in Africa and Asia are now in big trouble of going extinct in the wild.…
Lions Saved from Poisoning in Tanzania’s Maasai Steppe
Posted by Stuart Pimm on May 14, 2012 
Warriors for Wildlife Elvis Kisimir (right) and assistant Lomoni Ndooki. Photograph by Dr. Laly Lichtenfeld Dr. Laly Lichtenfeld is a National Geographic grantee through the Big Cats Initiative. She writes from Tanzania: (PLEASE NOTE: This post contains some graphic images.) Warriors for Wildlife are young Maasai men selected and trained by the African People and Wildlife…
Watching Wild Snow Leopards
Posted by Stuart Pimm on March 14, 2012 By Darla Hillard Education Director, Snow Leopard Conservancy Photo © John Merjanian: Wild snow leopard observed in Ladakh, northern India by members of the Wintertime Quest for the Snow Leopard Stuart writes: After Darla posted an earlier story, I begged her to do another to include a video clip of a young snow leopard playing with…
Nepalese Teenagers become Citizen Monitors for Snow Leopard Conservation
Posted by Stuart Pimm on January 31, 2012 By Darla Hillard Photo: Snow leopard captured by student-herder team in Nepal’s remote Himalaya High in the Nepalese Himalaya, teenage students are monitoring wildlife in their community. They have made a surprising discovery. Dr. Som Ale, Regional Director with the Dr. Som Ale, Regional Director with the Snow Leopard Conservancy has been leading an effort…
Gigapanning Patagonia
Posted by Stuart Pimm on June 20, 2011 To track long-term environmental changes we need to see both the wood and the trees. “click… whirrrrrrrrr….click ….. whirrrrrr ” — accompanied by an incessant wind that beats you on all sides on bad days. These sounds begin to fill my dreams at night. Most days are bad. Sonny Bass and I stand on the…
How a toad can turn you into a prince
Posted by Stuart Pimm on May 30, 2011 Do not, I repeat not, kiss frogs, toads, or anything similar. It’s after midnight. The forest is warm, damp, smells of rotting foliage, noisy with strange calls, and filled with creatures on the move. I’m with a madman. Bill Magnusson, an Australian ecologist, who has spent much of his life in the Amazon, is wearing…
The search for the grey-winged cotinga
Posted by Stuart Pimm on May 30, 2011 Not all National Geographic expeditions go smoothly. All adventures end at precisely the same point. Thirty seconds into the hot shower, a stream of dirty water runs down the drain. It takes with it the mud and dried blood, changing skin color from blotchy grey to pink, uncovers the until-now forgotten scrapes and cuts, and…
This week’s claim that the species extinction crisis is overblown is a sham
Posted by Stuart Pimm on May 21, 2011 Headlines in newspapers and websites blared out the headlines this week: “IPCC wrong again: species loss far less severe than feared.” (IPCC is the Nobel Prize winning international group that assesses climate change and its consequences.) “IPCC’s species extinction hype fundamental flawed” it continued. “Species extinction rates wildly overstated” went other headlines. “The International Union…
Biodiversity needs you! And your iPhone.
Posted by Stuart Pimm on May 9, 2011 Our knowledge of biodiversity is not good. We don’t know the names of most species. For the ones that we do, we don’t know where they once lived, let alone where they live now. It’s even worse for species that are rare, for they may soon not live anywhere. Now, armed with your iPhone…
India’s Latest Tiger Count Is Seriously Inadequate
Posted by Stuart Pimm on March 28, 2011 
The latest census of wild tigers in India, home to half the world’s wild tigers, shows that the number of big cats has increased by more than two hundred in four years. But the good news may be obscuring serious threats to the country’s iconic feline.
Finding a Home for Dracula
Posted by Stuart Pimm on March 23, 2011 National Geographic scientist Stuart Pimm reports on the quest for Dracula, a particularly lovely orchid that flourishes in the cloud forests of the northern Andes of Colombia.
Now Is the Winter of our Discontent …
Posted by Stuart Pimm on January 18, 2011 By Stuart Pimm “Now is the winter of our discontent,” the soon-to-be Richard III declares in opening Shakespeare’s play. He then quips to his brother, the current House of York king, that the future is surely sunny: the king has two sons and two brothers, so the York succession is certain. Life is full of…
Into Africa, Outside the “Bubble”
Posted by Stuart Pimm on September 14, 2010 Managing Africa’s wildlife means taking care of animals outside national parks and, vitally, taking care of the people there, too. By Stuart Pimm Mara National Park, Kenya–I’m sitting in the bar of a game lodge perched high on a koppie. The view is outstanding, for I can see better than 180 degrees of land stretching…
Building better bomas
Posted by Stuart Pimm on August 25, 2010 National Geographic Big Cats Initiative (BCI) scientist Stuart Pimm ventures into East Africa to study bomas, the traditional shelters constructed to corral livestock. He visits two BCI grantees working with local herders to fortify bomas with wire and spiny plants in so-called ”living fences.” The hope is that if farm animals can be protected their owners will have…
Experiencing diversity before it’s gone
Posted by Stuart Pimm on July 23, 2010 Photo of a Baining fire dancer by Stuart L. Pimm By Stuart Pimm Rabaul, Papua New Guinea–A surreal monster pauses in the very heart of the fire, stomps its feet–sending showers of red hot embers into the air–then shakes its huge bird-beaked head, and dances towards us. For hours, Baining fire dancers dash through the fire as…
Can Colombia’s rich biodiversity escape to cooler altitudes?
Posted by Stuart Pimm on July 1, 2010 By Stuart Pimm Chingaza National Park, Colombia–Colombia didn’t qualify for the World Cup this year. You’d never know from the throngs of people around TVs everywhere I went in Bogota last week. (If you are not a football follower: Fans have to cheer for more than one team given the odds and the vagaries of…
The Serengeti road to disaster
Posted by Stuart Pimm on June 18, 2010 By Stuart Pimm What comes to mind when you think of Africa? During the World Cup, perhaps thousands of vuvuzelas sounding like a swarm of very angry bees as fans cheer their team. But other than that? Surely huge herds of animals walking across vast, open plains. I arrived in South Africa, in 1996, to…
Bar-coding biodiversity
Posted by Stuart Pimm on June 7, 2010 By Stuart Pimm Braga, Portugal–We don’t have names for perhaps 90 percent of all the species on Earth–and even when we do have names for them, we can’t readily identify many of them. In some cases we may encounter only fragments of specimens, making it even more challenging to identify them. A small piece of DNA, however, is enough to provide a ”bar…
Why the ultimate frequent flyer–the American knot–is endangered
Posted by Stuart Pimm on May 25, 2010 This is the second part of a series on the shorebirds that make one of the longest annual migrations in the world, the 9,000-mile flight that spans the entire Americas, from feeding grounds on Tierra del Fuego to breeding grounds in the Arctic. The heroic journey has evolved over countless generations. But can the migration, and the…
Ringing the knot on the New Jersey shore
Posted by Stuart Pimm on May 25, 2010 Conservation biologist Stuart Pimm joins citizen scientists–highly skilled amateur naturalists and their extraordinary organizer–on a New Jersey beach. The mission : Catch, band, and release hundreds of red knots, tiny birds that stop to rest and feed on one of the world’s epic animal migrations–the annual trek between the southern and northern extremes of the…
The global benefits of Canada’s logging moratorium
Posted by Stuart Pimm on May 18, 2010 A huge swath of Canada’s boreal forest was protected today. Stuart Pimm, a member of the International Boreal Conservation Science Panel, explains why that’s important for biodiversity and for slowing global warming. By Stuart Pimm Today, 20 companies of the Forest Products Association of Canada and 9 leading environmental organizations agreed to protect 72 million hectares (more…
Biodiversity: More than a list and stranger than Avatar
Posted by Stuart Pimm on April 30, 2010 By Stuart Pimm Biscayne National Park, Florida–There’s a distinct air of competition at a bioblitz. We’re all here to identify as many species as we can in 24 hours. We know how well our colleagues have done in the previous three efforts. We can do better. I listen to the opening talks and keep one…
America’s most abundant, most wanted bird
Posted by Stuart Pimm on April 6, 2010 By Stuart L. Pimm What’s America’s most abundant, most wanted bird? OK, I’ll put you out of your misery. It’s the chicken and we eat billions of them. So, now list some of the wild birds that are abundant. Cardinal, red-winged blackbird, mockingbird–they are all native. There’s introduced starling and house sparrow too. We’ve all…
Are you ready to Bioblitz?
Posted by Stuart Pimm on March 17, 2010 By Stuart L. Pimm Another perfect day in paradise. The winds are light, the sunrise glorious, the sky blue all day. The temperature is a pleasant low 70s F and humidity is low. But then, most days at this time of year are perfect here in the Florida Keys. Yes, I know many of you…
