Biodiversity & Conservation

Biodiversity and Biological Collections Web Server
This impressive site is maintained at Cornell University, and is a main Internet site for biodiversity information. Specifically,

"This WWW server is devoted to information of interest to systematists and other biologists of the organismic kind. Within these pages you will find information about specimens in biological collections, taxonomic authority files, directories of biologists, reports by various standards bodies (IOPI, ASC, SA2000, etc), an archive of the Taxacom, MUSE-L and CICHLID-L listservs), access to on-line journals (including Flora On-line) and information about MUSE and Delta."

Collections of links are arranged taxonomically (e.g., Entomology and Invertebrate Zoology), or by subject (e.g., General Biodiversity Resources). There's also a built-in search engine in case you're looking for something in particular.

Biodiversity & Conservation Hypertext Book
This is a huge list of conservation-related links maintained at the School of Biological Sciences at the University of California, Irvine. there area a total of sixteen chapters ranging from the "History of Life" to "Values of Biodiversity" and "Human Population Growth".

World Conservation Monitoring Centre
The World Conservation Monitoring Centre focuses the "management of information on the conservation and sustainable use of the world's living resources". This site has a large amount of useful information in the form of databases that can be accessed online. The databases are specific for particular countries, species and protected area. Also very interesting is the searchable database of threatened animals of the world. You can search taxonomically (e.g., by class, order, family, species or common name) by country and/or category of threat. There are also a number of tables providing summary statistics for particular types of animals.

Endangered Species Program (U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service)
This site, maintained by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, provides a good introduction to endangered species management in the United States. An online version of the Endangered Species Act can be accessed, as well as lists of endangered species by state (e.g., Minnesota) and a description of the process of listing a species as endangered.

Environment Australia Biodiversity Group
The Australian Department of the Environment and Heritage maintains this site which contains a variety of information about environmental protection and issues of biodiversity in Australia. Much of the material is specific to Australia including the National Strategy for the Conservation of Australia's Biological Diversity and information on threatened communities and species in Australia.

Critical Ecoregions Program
The Sierra Club has a program aimed at preserving functioning units of these ecosystems (e.g., prairie). They state:

"The Critical Ecoregions Program offers a practical, long-term strategy to buttress the "web of life" on Earth. Region by region, we're developing multifaceted plans for every major land and water system in the United States and Canada, home to most of the Sierra Club's 500,000 members. Tailored to the particular needs of each ecosystem, these 21 regional plans will help achieve our global vision--to restore the ecological health of the planet--through concrete local action."

There's also a nice clickable map of the distribution of these ecoregions.

Endangered and Extinct Species Lists
This site, maintained by EE-Link (Environmental Education on the Internet) has pulled together information from U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and other sources on endangered species in the United States (e.g., Great Lakes area) and worldwide. There's also a short glossary of biodiversity and ecology terms.

INBio (Instituto Nacional de Biodiversidad)
INBio is a non-profit organization within Costa Rica that is working to catalog the biodiversity within that country. INBio is built upon the premise that "a tropical society will conserve a major portion of its wild biodiversity only if protected areas can generate enough intellectual and economic income for its own upkeep". There is a wealth of useful information here about biodiversity in Costa Rica, what biological inventories are and how they are useful, and the role of biological "prospecting" in conservation. This is a very attractive and informative site and the pages are also available in Spanish

EPA Global Warming Site
This site represents the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency's official site dedicated to the issue of global warming. There is a lot of information here including a good introduction to global warming, a summary of current news, discussion of possible effects on different types of ecological communities and current and possible actions to deal with the problem.

The Science of Ozone Depletion
This is another site maintained by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, in this case providing a wealth of information about the role of ozone in the atmosphere, trends in atmospheric ozone, causes of depletion and what can be done to prevent further loss. This site is a great resource for up-to-date information about this significant environmental problem.