On July 28, a coalition of conservation groups filed a petition with the New York State Department of Environmental Conservation (NYS-DEC), requesting that the distribution, sale, possession, and use (for any purpose) of second-generation anticoagulant rodenticides (SGARs) be banned throughout New York State. In support of the proposed ban, the coalition (Earthjustice, Center for Biological Diversity, American Bird Conservancy, Cornell Lab of Ornithology, New York City Audubon, and Raptors Are The Solution) cites what it considers to be overwhelming evidence that SGARs poison much more than rodents. “We report 225 lethal poisoning incidents across 31 species in New York State alone”, says Earthjustice attorney Christopher Amato (New York, NY). “Red-tailed hawks, horned owls, deer, foxes, coyotes – all have been affected. In fact, between 2000–2010 there were even 4250 accidental rodenticide poisonings of humans across the US, 79% of which involved children under 6 years of age.” Red-tailed hawks (Buteo jamaicensis) in NYC's Central Park are among the unintended victims of rodenticides. SGARs were developed as rodents became resistant to warfarin. Like warfarin they prevent clotting, gradually leading to death by hemorrhaging; but unlike it, a lethal dose can be ingested in just a single feeding. Unfortunately, SGARs can take up to one week to kill, during which time they accumulate in active form in the victim's liver; thus, predators that consume the slow-moving, poisoned animals – rodents or otherwise – could succumb to these agents as well. Under the terms of the US Environmental Protection Agency's (EPA's) Risk Mitigation for Ten Rodenticides document issued in 2008, all SGARs for aboveground use must be placed in bait stations to reduce exposure to non-target animals; only bags of bait product over 8 lb (3.6 kg) can be marketed, to deter purchasing by the general public; and no product for house-hold use can contain the SGARs brodifacoum, bromadiolone, difethialone, or difenacoum. However, despite the fall in residential use, agricultural and professional purchases continue. “With SGARs we're killing off the very predators that help us keep rats and mice in check”, warns Cynthia Palmer (American Bird Conservancy, Washington, DC). “We urge New York to take the lead in utilizing alternative methods such as rat-proofing buildings and taking advantage of raptor predation and other natural controls.” The NYSDEC supplied Frontiers with the statement: “NYSDEC supports EPA's efforts to develop a nationwide approach to restrict SGAR use. That approach must take into account the rodenticides' effects on non-target wildlife, as well as public health concerns and the presence of rodents in residential and agricultural areas.” In June, The Ocean Cleanup (Delft, The Netherlands) released a lengthy scientific report concluding that its proposed method for removing half of the plastic flotsam from the North Pacific Gyre within 10 years is feasible. The organization's founder, Boyan Slat, was just 17 years old in 2012, when he first publicized his design, which uses the natural forces of wind and water currents to move plastic debris into floating barriers attached to a manta-shaped, seafloor-anchored platform, while sea life apparently passes unharmed underneath. According to Slat, a Dutch engineering student, “By using crowd-funding, we hope to raise $2 million to begin the pilot phase, in which – through a series of upscaled tests – we'll work toward a large-scale and fully operational trial in 3 to 4 years' time”. The campaign runs through mid-September and has raised over $1.3 million so far. Critics have identified flaws in the concept, including potential bycatch of surface-inhabiting organisms such as Velella and Porpita species. Slat responds, “Although I don't want to go into too much detail, I can say that these arguments do not in any way interfere with the report's main conclusion that it is indeed technically feasible and financially viable. The revised feasibility report should be online before we start the pilot phase”. Marcus Eriksen, co-founder of the 5 Gyres Institute (Santa Monica, CA), believes that it's better to focus on upstream solutions, such as phasing out microplastics in consumer products. “Is there really a need for a debris-capturing device if the ocean is already spitting it out on shorelines? I will soon publish the first global appraisal of marine plastic count and weight. I estimate that there are 270 000 metric tons of trash from 5.25 trillion particles floating on the ocean surface. This is less than 0.2% of the 2012 global production of plastic, which indicates that the ocean surface is not where the plastic is. I suggest that Slat focus on rivers, because going to the ocean is an inefficient use of time and money.” Eriksen also suggests incentivizing fishermen to recover plastic waste from the seas. Professor Phil Hayward (Southern Cross University, Lismore, Australia) is a sea urchin devotee. “I love eating them”, he says. “They taste like a cross between oysters and caviar – absolutely delicious. My favorite style is from south Chile, where they're lightly marinated in lime juice with herbs, and they melt in the mouth.” It is an experience he would like more Australians to enjoy, as a local mass market could help save Tasmanian coral reefs stripped bare by an invasive echinoderm species. The long-spined sea urchin (Centrostephanus rodgersii) is endemic to Australia's east coast, where its consumption of algae and seagrass creates a diverse habitat patchwork. But since the East Australian Current warmed slightly starting in the 1960s, urchin larvae passively carried south from the mainland to Tasmania survived to eventually create breeding colonies and become the dominant invertebrate on shallow reefs. An estimated 25% of the island's reefs are now “barrens”, covered in nothing but urchins due to their voracious appetite for algae (including kelp), and the overfishing of predators such as rock lobsters. A small export industry has barely dented numbers and control programs have failed. “The money runs out, the momentum is lost, and then the creatures come back”, says Hayward. “When you're trying to get on top of invasives, you have to find an economic incentive to remove them.” Pest control through commercial exploitation has appeal, but first the dining public has to be convinced. In an article in Locale (2013; 71–90), Hayward described how Tasmania's Museum of Old and New Art (Hobart) adopted “Eat the Problem” as its 2012–13 summer market theme. Tourists sampled sea urchin butter and “invasive paella” made with non-native rabbits and snails as well as urchins, but demand at restaurants has not appreciably increased since. “Sea urchins are eaten in lots of places, in South America, France, New Zealand, China, and elsewhere in Asia”, says Hayward, a specialist in island societies and adaptation to pressures such as climate change. “But Anglo cultures tend to be very prescriptive about what we will or will not eat. So there's a cultural education task – what I've coined as eco-culinary activism – to teach people to eat more diverse foods.” In early July, Atlantic Cape Community College (ACCC) installed a window film on its Cape May County Campus building, reducing deadly bird strikes and slashing energy costs. The move is part of a growing effort to cut bird collisions with buildings, the second largest cause of direct human-related mortality for US avifauna. Where architects see beauty in shiny glass-clad buildings, birds see reflections of trees and sky, explains Christine Sheppard, an ornithologist with the American Bird Conservancy (Washington, DC), a conservation organization. As many as one billion birds die each year in the US as a result of collisions with buildings. “Bird collisions were occurring daily and disturbing students and staff”, says Stacey Clapp, a spokesperson for ACCC (Mays Landing, NJ). At the same time, the college needed to save money on cooling costs. Advised by Sheppard, the college spent $17 000 to buy and install an avian-friendly film on 255 windows of the Cape May County Campus building. From the outside, the film looks opaque white, but from the inside the windows appear just barely tinted, she says. There hasn't been a single bird strike since installation of the film, which also cuts heat energy from incoming sunlight by half. “Meanwhile, cooling costs are down and students have reclaimed a space by the windows that before the retrofit was unusable due to glare and heat”, Clapp continues. A New Jersey college building's window film helps reduce bird strikes. Sheppard has instituted a testing program that provides feedback to glass and window film manufacturers who are responding to demands for avian-friendly products. The most effective method seems to involve window patterns dense enough that birds recognize that they can't fly through them. Solutions range from ceramic dots screen-printed on window exteriors to threads embedded in the glass. Growing numbers of jurisdictions, including Toronto, San Francisco, and Oakland, are adopting bird-friendly building codes, Sheppard says. Since 2011, the US Green Building Council's LEED certification program has been pilot-testing a bird-friendly credit rating that has proven popular with clients. “It's absolutely worth the time to look into making buildings bird-friendly because it decreases bird strikes and energy costs”, Clapp declares, adding that the college's project has been so successful that the windows of a new building under construction will include a diamond-shaped etching pattern on the glass to help prevent bird collisions. The endangered snail kite (Rostrhamus sociabilis plumbeus), a medium-sized raptor, has been used as an indicator of ecosystem health in Florida's Everglades. Ironically, it has recently come back, from 700 to 1200 birds, thanks to a new food source: an exotic snail invading southern Florida's water bodies. As its common name suggests, the snail kite typically feeds almost exclusively on the native Florida apple snail (Pomacea paludosa), an algavore. But the invasive herbivorous island apple snail (Pomacea maculata), likely introduced via the aquarium trade, has contributed to an increasingly large proportion of the snail kite's diet. It is hypothesized that current improvements in snail kite reproduction and population stabilization are due, at least in part, to the prevalence of the exotic snail. At the 2014 North America Congress for Conservation Biology in Missoula, Montana, Rebecca Wilcox, a wildlife biologist from the University of Florida–Gainesville, presented data showing that the snail kite does not prefer the exotic to the native. She did, however, find a size preference: snail kites opted for prey no bigger than a large adult native snail. “The snail kites are simply responding to an increase in prey, but there could be long-term implications”, according to Wilcox. For example, she argues, it's not yet clear whether the exotic snail population is stable, or if those snails contain any potentially harmful contaminants. Prolific pink egg masses yield exotic snails that feed endangered snail kites. When snail kite numbers were at their lowest, managers found themselves in an unusual situation – allowing an intentional infestation of an exotic aquatic plant (Hydrilla verticillata), which serves as nesting grounds for the invasive snails to persist. “We were asking the managing agencies to spare an exotic plant to create habitat for an exotic snail to save our endangered birds”, recalls Paul Gray, science coordinator for Audubon Florida's Everglades Restoration Program (Lorida, FL). There are other concerns. The Everglades is home to the world's largest man-made wetlands, including six stormwater treatment areas (STAs) that filter phosphorus from the system. Last year, water quality in one of the STAs dropped dramatically because of an infestation of the exotic snail. “There's no known way to get rid of them (without killing other species), and we're not sure how to prevent this from happening again”, says Gray. This scenario is symptomatic of the growing complexities of ecosystem management in the face of non-native invasions and imperiled species. “We really need to think through native and exotic species interactions when dealing with species management”, Wilcox concludes. The Indian Government's Minister of Finance Arun Jaitley has announced the launch of a National Adaptation Fund for Climate Change (NAFCC). “Climate change is a reality, which all of us have to face together”, Jaitley said in a speech on the budget. Having been allocated 1 billion rupees (over US$16 million) from the country's annual budget, the NAFCC funds will be specifically used to promote climate-adaptation projects in the agricultural sector. Dependence on monsoon rains makes farming operations in India vulnerable to climate change, particularly since nearly half of the country's cereals and 80% of its legumes and minor millets are grown in regions where irrigation is unavailable. “Annual and perennial crops are being adversely affected due to increasing monsoon variability and increasingly frequent extreme weather events like hailstorms”, points out Mandapaka Maheswari, director of the Central Research Institute for Dryland Agriculture (Hyderabad, India). Maheswari also adds that, according to field studies, small increases in ambient temperature can affect traits associated with yield and reproductive success in important staple crops such as rice and wheat. Although the size of the NAFCC is relatively small, experts see it as recognition of the fact that climate change has begun to affect people and sectors critical to the national economy. “The fund should be ‘scaled up’ in the coming years, and different models of cofinancing should be explored, with contributions from state governments”, suggests Rajendra Kumar Pachauri, director general of The Energy and Resources Institute (New Delhi). In light of climate-change impacts, “Adaptation in agriculture should translate into better water management, temperature-resistant seeds, improved crop diversity, and more reliable weather forecasting”, asserts Chandra Bhushan, the deputy director general for the Centre for Science and Environment (New Delhi). To help mitigate the effects of climate change, the Indian Council of Agricultural Research has demonstrated new technologies, such as flood-tolerant rice varieties, and social interventions, like community-run seed banks and village-level climate-risk management committees. Maheswari hopes that, “With money from the NAFCC, it will be possible to ‘scale up’ such projects and initiate new ones to quantify gains of adaptation”. Ocean acidification (OA) poses a growing threat in waters vital to Alaska's commercial and subsistence fisheries, and the socioeconomic repercussions for fishing-dependent communities could be considerable, according to a new report (Prog Oceanogr 2014; doi:10.1016/j.pocean.2014.07.001). The absorption of atmospheric has turned oceans 30% more CO2 acidic since preindustrial times. “If carbon emissions continue increasing as projected, by 2100 ocean acidity will be three times greater than today”, warns report co-leader Jeremy Mathis, an oceanographer with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (Seattle, WA). The study argues that Alaskan seas are particularly vulnerable to acidification, because colder water absorbs more CO2, and because regional oceanic circulation patterns drive naturally acidic seawater from the depths up to the surface. Drawing on biological research, climate and ocean data, and demographic information, the research team evaluated patterns of community dependence on Alaskan fisheries vulnerable to OA – namely, shellfish, salmon, and other finfish – and compiled an OA risk index for each census area. Surrounded by some of the planet's richest marine ecosystems and blessed with a coastline of over 88 500 km, Alaska produces about one-half of the US total commercial fish catch. The state's fishing industry supports over 100 000 jobs and generates more than $5 billion in revenue annually, with fishery-related tourism adding an additional $300 million. Roughly 17% of Alaskans (about 120 000 people) depend on fish for most of their dietary protein. Acidification depletes seawater's natural supply of carbonate ions, used by calcifying organisms such as shellfish to build their shells and skeletons. While clams and their kin represent only a small fraction of Alaska's seafood, pteropods – tiny swimming snails that serve as prey for finfish species – cannot grow their shells normally when seawater is too acidic. Studies also show that red king and tanner crabs – two important Alaskan fisheries – develop more slowly and are less likely to survive in more acidic waters. Much is still unknown about how OA will affect Alaska's individual species and its marine ecosystems. Ultimately, however, communities in southeast and southwest Alaska that rely heavily on fishing, and have relatively lower incomes and fewer employment alternatives, will likely face the highest risk, Mathis concludes. “We want to make sure that communities around the state have the information that they need to make good, long-term decisions about their future, and that certainly needs to include an understanding of the risks associated with OA.” In developing countries around the tropics, billions of coconut husks are discarded every year as an agricultural waste product. Elisa Teipel and her colleagues wanted to transform these husks into useful products, while also contributing to environmental preservation and local economies. Their company, Essentium Materials (College Station, TX), created a composite material using coconut husks and recycled plastic to form a strong synthetic fiber that can be used to make automotive truck liners, battery pack covers for electric cars, and many other products. “The coolest part is seeing something that was once just waste become a new resource”, said Teipel in a recent US National Science Foundation (NSF) press release. “It is benefitting both the environment and the communities in developing nations where the coconuts are grown.” About 50 billion coconut husks are annually tossed out as waste. According to the NSF, replacing existing polyester fibers with these coconut-husk-derived synthetic fibers could reduce petroleum consumption by 2–4 million barrels and decrease atmospheric CO2 emissions by 450 000 tons each year. In addition to the beneficial environmental implications, local farmers – who typically earn less than US$2 a day – could effectively double their annual income by contributing raw materials for the coconut husk fiber to broader global markets. “Our company was built from the idea that you can turn waste into a resource”, continued Teipel. “New materials provide opportunities for engineering applications worldwide and, more importantly for farmers abroad, waste can be ‘new found treasure’.” Essentium Materials currently operates in the Philippines – close to coconut milk and meat processing plants – to separate the coconut husks from the fibers and to ship the latter to the US for further treatment. The company has also developed other products, such as kitchen cutting boards, that use the shell of the coconut. “We understand the importance of selecting and developing the right materials for the job, and recognize that there are many waste streams that can be utilized to create new and better materials and products that have more benefits than just better performance”, Teipel concluded. “Ultimately, our company is about transforming waste in order to transform people's lives…and making the world a better place.”