David Ehrenfeld

Urban conservation and environmental protection in China: a major effort by the Chinese Academy of Sciences

The Institute of Urban Environment (IUE) is a joint undertaking of the Chinese Academy of Sciences and the municipal government of Xiamen (Amoy), Fujian Province, a busy port city located in southeastern China facing the Taiwan Strait. Founded in 2006 with an initial investment of 300 million (

Genes, populations, and species

37.5 million), the mission of IUE is to perform basic research in earth sciences, urban ecology, environmental sciences, informatics, and related technologies to provide a scientific basis for the sustainable development of Chinese cities and their clusters. We write this informational article to make conservation biologists aware of this extraordinary new facility providing exciting opportunities for collaborative urban conservation and environmental research in the Asia Pacific region, which contains many of the oldest yet fastestgrowing urban centers in the world. Up and running in a remarkably short time, IUE has been designed to house 150 permanent staff scientists, 260 contractual staff, 300 MS and PhD graduate students, and 50 postdoctoral and visiting scientists. Foreign scholars and graduate students are welcomed to work in IUE, where modern research facilities and housing are provided (http://www.iue.ac.cn/en/index.asp). The mission and key research areas of the institute include the following:

The Arrogance of Humanism

The species problem and conservation: what are we protecting assessing extinction threats - toward a re-evaluation of IUCN threatened species categories a possible method for the rapid assessment of biodiversity genetically-effective population size of large mammals - an assessment of estimators reserve design for territorial species - the effects of patch size and spacing on the viability of the Northern spotted owl seed germination percentage increases with population size in a fragmented prairie species are small populations of plants worth preserving? the rarity of aminthopsis virginiae (marsupiala - dasyuridae) in relation to natural and unnatural habitats littoral fish communities in Lake Tanganyika - irreplaceable diversity supported by intricate interactions among species conservation lesson from long-term studies of checkerspot butterflies geometrical factors and metapopulation dynamics of the bush cricket, metriopetra bicolor philippi (orthoptera - tettigonidae) Puerto Rican parrots and potential limitations of the metapopulation approach to species conservation delayed sexual maturity and demographics of Blandings turtles (emydoidea blandingii) - implications for conservation and management of long-lived organisms island extinction rates for regular censuses conservation genetics of the Pacific salmon I - temporal changes in allele frequency conservation genetics of the black rhinoceros (diceros bicornis) I - evidence from the mitochondrial DNA of three populations restoration considerations for wiregrass (aristida stricta) - allozymic diversity of populations population structure of loggerhead turtles (caretta caretta) in the NorthWestern Atlantic Ocean and Mediterranean Sea mitochondrial DNA variability of the grey wolf - genetic consequences of population decline and habitat fragmentation use of genetic characters in conservation biology on the use of morphologic and molecular genetic characters to investigate species status the red wolf is not a hybrid comments on red wolf response to Wayne, Nowak, Phillips and Henry use of molecular characters in conservation biology estimates of lethal equivalents and the cost on inbreeding in mammals hereditary blindness in a captive wolf (canis lupus) population - frequency reduction of a deleterious allele in relation to gene conservation allocating scarce resources for conservation of endangered subspecies - partitioning zoo space for tigers minor breeds and major genetic losses radish as a model system for the study of engineered gene escape rates via crop-weed mating.