Where the Caribou Roam
As part of our research on wildlife, Sightline monitors the population of the Selkirk caribou herd, the last population of caribou to venture south of the Canadian border. Last year, we even created a map showing the historical range of North America's mountain caribou, and compared it to their much-diminished current range. (It's on the left; a bigger version is here; animated version here.)
Our map gives the continent-scale picture, but now the good folks at the Mountain Caribou Project have produced a new map with incredible local detail for the British Columbia Rockies (the cartography is by Miistakis Institute). Their map is a fine-grained look at just how fragmented and precarious are the Selkirk caribou and their similarly-endangered brethren in the Purcell Range. Same goes for most of the caribou along the spine of the Canadian Rockies. (A small version is on the left; a much bigger version is here.)
While US mountain caribou are now all but extinct, British Columbia's caribou are facing a barrage of threats, the most serious of which is unsustainable logging. (See, for instance, Sightline's maps of BC's vast clearcuts in the Rockies: here and here. Animated versions are here and here.)
So kudos to the Mountain Caribou Project for their skilled mapping of vanishing habitat. I'm hoping it's a wake-up call for BC to provide sufficient protection before the caribou make like their cousins south of the border -- and disappear forever.
Punishment for Gluttons?
One of the side effects of the rapid increase in ethanol consumption in the US is that corn--the main feedstock for ethanol--has gotten much more expensive. Just take a look at the futures markets: the July 2007 corn contract started climbing last fall, which was about the time people started to realize just how quickly demand for corn-based ethanol was growing.
Obviously, rising costs trickle down to consumers in all sorts of ways. If corn prices stay high, meat, poultry, and dairy products will all get more expensive, since the animals are fed lots of corn. But more directly, stuff that's made from corn -- such as the corn flour, corn sweeteners, and corn oils that are used in all sorts of processed foods -- will get pricier too. (Sorry, donut fiends.)
So wait, does this mean that there's an upside to the rapid rise in corn prices? If junk food gets more expensive, will we eat more healthfully?
Not likely.
