About
From air pollution to zoonotic diseases and everything else in between, The Conservation Report presents environmental buzz, news, and comment.
I created The Conservation Report blog in an attempt to produce a well-informed platform to disseminate environmental buzz, news, and opinion. Personally, I believe that environmental degradation, living wastefully, or unsustainably are the greatest threats to democracy and national security. Furthermore, politics are relevant, because policy is translated into the environment. We paint landscapes with both good and bad policies. As a result, I discuss political issues on The Conservation Report.
I grew up in North Carolina where I explored the countryside and gained a respect for nature’s complexity and fragility. To fulfill my childhood dream of living in Africa, I joined the Peace Corps, so I’m a Returned Peace Corps Volunteer from Madagascar.
After graduate school at the School of Development Studies (DEV) at the University of East Anglia, I returned to Madagascar to escort a research expedition to study the influences of anthropogenic activity on Madagascar’s unique Spiny Forest. We published our findings in Biological Conservation.
After Madagascar, I was contracted to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) as a National Marine Fisheries Service observer to collect economic and scientific data onboard commercial fishing vessels where I gained experience in the gillnet, trawl, and scallop fisheries. Witnessing the ocean’s power and its marine life reaffirmed my belief that nature and its elements deserve protection. However, I equally believe that resource users, such as fishers, must be integrated into nature protection and their livelihoods preserved by promoting sustainability through natural resource use that’s in balance and harmony with ecosystems.
After working at sea, I moved to Woods Hole, Massachusetts, and continued working as a NOAA contractor in the role of instructor biologist with NOAA’s Northeast Fisheries Observer Program (NEFOP). I was responsible for certifying new trainees and recertifying observers in the gillnet, purse seine, pot and trap, and trawl fisheries in addition to teaching and developing new catch estimation data logs and protocols for NEFOP.
Currently, I’m a third-year law student at Thomas M. Cooley Law School, where I’m concentrating in environmental law and litigation. Most recently, I completed a legal externship with the Chesapeake Bay Foundation in Richmond, Virginia.
More: My LinkedIn profile
Hello I have started an environmentally friendly business and forum that may be of interest to you and your readers.
The business is Find A Green Store, a directory for companies with a green conscious. It is free for companies to list. It started in May and now has 106 links for the conscios consumer.
http://www.findagreenstore.com/
The categories include clothing, home, children, cleaning products, alternative energy, news and foundations, with a total of 16 categories
I also started a forum, Greener Biz on Collective X for the above mentioned companies to share and find resources and information pertaining to a green business. http://greenbiz.collectivex.com/main/summary
Greener Biz is a free alternative to the traditional networking at large conferences that costs hundreds to attend and can be difficult to get to if your business is not in a large metropolitan area. As a small business owner with limited funding I needed some way to connect with other like minded individuals without the expense.
I would love to get more exposure for the forum, so more companies can join and gain networking and informative tools to become successful.
If you are so inclined to write about my business and the forum, that would be wonderful and I would happily answer any questions you have.
Thank you for your time. I look forward to hearing from you, Leah Oviedo
If you are not interested in writing a post, I would still love to have your blog listed in the News & Facts category.
Hi there,
Sorry to post a comment, this is not really a comment, more a request but I couldn’t find your email.
I think your blog is very interesting. Maybe you would be interested in posting your blogs on my website, http://www.altglobe.com which is talking about what’s in the World in terms of green, sustainabillity, spirituality that all go together
The idea is to help you spreading your word by extending your community.
We feel there are lots of individuals interested in these big challenges for the year to come -both individual and community challenges – and our goal is to help everyone reaching information of how they can achieve those changes. I think your posts would be a tremendous contribution to that.
All you need to do is creating a profile and let me know you want to post, and then you can actually just *email* your blog whenever you have a new post. It’s that easy! The website will take care about linking it to your profile and respect most of your editing (website links, images, fonts…) – yes it will crop out some things like weird smileys or what not -
Please check out my website and our current bloggers! They are all on the home page!
(Note you cannot have access to any profile until you are registered, but you can see all the articles).
Please tell me how it sounds to you, hope to hear from you soon…
Please note this week we have a our first contest! bloggers can win wonderful experiences and / or gifts generously given by our members!
Of course this community is free
cristele at altglobe dot com
Very interesting blog. I’m currently based in the Philippines and this place seems to rewriting the book on unsustainable practices- which is a real shame as it has some of the most fantastically diverse places in the world. Most of the land has been severly deforested with some amazing exceptions, however the marine environment has the highets biodiversity in the world (with localised overfishing for the aquarium trade). Case in point, the tuna fisheries here (now the biggest in the world) reported catches far below their 2008 targets, so next year as a solution they plan on bringing forward the start of the fishing season to make up the difference! What a plan, scoop them up before they get a chance to breed and there won’t be any in 5 years time. Not even the remotest discussion took place on whether or not to reduce the fishing season to help them recover.
Hey,
Nice blog do you have here. Great environmental pictures. Where do you go to take such pictures?
Many thanks Justin. I’m pleased you like my blog. I do take environmental pictures (such as the frog image above from Madagascar, and that’s my thumb), but about 95% of the images I use are taken by others. However, I do attribute the photo to the author when possible, or provide the link where I found the image, or I try to use images with a creative commons license via Flickr or Wikipedia.
Hey,
Amazing pictures!…….
I like your blog here… and it’s refreshing to find somebody who actually cares about the environment. It seems very rarely that people nowadays actually even consider the damage they’re doing when they act the way they do, yet I’m glad to know I’m not the only one who gets upset by this.
lots of info