The Society for Conservation Biology recently completed a major
overhaul of the SCB website. The new website provides a wealth
of information on recent issues in conservation policy. You can
access regular updates on conservation policy news by
subscribing to the Policy RSS feed. Other sections of the
website provide information on SCB’s regional sections and
working groups. The most popular section of the website is the
board listing job openings in the field of conservation biology.
A new study published in Science by Brosi and Biber compares
species listed under the US Endangered Species Act (ESA) in
response to citizen petitions versus initiatives from within the
agencies (FWS and NMFS). The authors asked whether citizen
involvement, as some claim, diverts scarce conservation
resources to species which are at lower risk than those
identified by the agencies. The authors found, on the contrary,
that species listed in response to citizen petitions were at
least as threatened as those proposed by the agencie