One Book 2023-2024: Environmental Justice - No Country for Eight-Spot Butterflies: A Lyric Essay

Biodiversity Loss & Changing Ecosystems

Featured Resources by Source Type: Biodiversity

Featured Organizations & Online Resources

Center for Biological Diversity
The Center for Biological Diversity works through science, law and creative media to secure a future for all species, great or small, hovering on the brink of extinction.
National Wildlife Federation
"The National Wildlife Federation is America's largest conservation organization. We work with more than 4 million members, partners and supporters in communities across the country to protect and restore wildlife habitat, confront global warming and connect with nature."
National Audubon Society
"Audubon's mission is to conserve and restore natural ecosystems, focusing on birds, other wildlife, and their habitats for the benefit of humanity and the earth's biological diversity."
The Nature Conservancy
"The Mission of the Nature Conservancy is to preserve the plants, animals, and natural communities that represent the diversity of life on earth by protecting the lands and waters they need to survive."
The Nature Conservancy - Washington
"The Nature Conservancy is working to conserve nature’s unique places in Washington and around the world."
Conservation International
"Building upon a strong foundation of science, partnership and field demonstration, CI empowers societies to responsibly and sustainably care for nature, our global biodiversity, for the well-being of humanity."
World Wildlife Fund
"For more than 45 years, WWF has been protecting the future of nature. The world’s leading conservation organization, WWF works in 100 countries and is supported by 1.2 million members in the United States and close to 5 million globally. WWF's unique way of working combines global reach with a foundation in science, involves action at every level from local to global, and ensures the delivery of innovative solutions that meet the needs of both people and nature."
Washington State Department of Ecology
The Washington State Department of Ecology is the state of Washington's environmental regulatory agency
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Ocean Conservancy
Ocean Conservancy is working with you to protect the ocean from today’s greatest global challenges. Together, we create evidence-based solutions for a healthy ocean and the wildlife and communities that depend on it.

Featured Articles

Use the links below to find articles from different publication types.

Reference Articles

These background or overview articles are useful for defining and understanding the history and key concepts of a topic. They come from subject-specific books and reports and aim to help you understand the basics. Find more articles like these in the databases Gale Ebooks, Opposing Viewpoints, or CQ Researcher.

Coral Bleaching A 2011 article from the Environmental Encyclopedia
Endangered Species "Can they be saved from extinction?" A 2021 report from CQ Researcher
Biodiversity A 2016 article from UXL Sustainable Living
Biodiversity and Health A 2018 article from Environmental Health in the 21st Century: From Air Pollution to Zoonotic Diseases

Popular Source Articles

These kinds of articles are from mainstream publications like the "Washington Post," "The Atlantic," or other publications aimed at the general public., as well as a wide variety of websites, both commercial, educational, and governmental. Find more sources like this in Academic Search Complete, ProQuest Combined, or Science In Context.

A Biodiversity Crisis Is Affecting Billions
NY Times July 2022
Urban Nature and Intentionality: Elevating Urban Biodiversity and Equity
Parks & Recreation, Mar 2022

Scholarly Articles

Scholarly journal articles are written by scholars/experts/researchers for others in their field with the aim of sharing, reviewing, and building new information. These publications can give us insight into the ways that environmental justice topics are being studied at a research-based, academic levels. Find more articles like these in ProQuest Combined, Agricola, OR Global Issues in Context.

Biodiversity Conservation in a Post-COVID-19 Economy Oryx, March 2022. The impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic extend to global biodiversity and its conservation. Although short-term beneficial or adverse impacts on biodiversity have been widely discussed, there is less attention to the likely political and economic responses to the crisis and their implications for conservation. Here we describe four possible alternative future policy responses: (1) restoration of the previous economy, (2) removal of obstacles to economic growth, (3) green recovery and (4) transformative economic reconstruction. Each alternative offers opportunities and risks for conservation. They differ in the agents they emphasize to mobilize change (e.g. markets or states) and in the extent to which they prioritize or downplay the protection of nature. We analyse the advantages and disadvantages of these four options from a conservation perspective. We argue that the choice of post-COVID-19 recovery strategy has huge significance for the future of biodiversity, and that conservationists of all persuasions must not shrink from engagement in the debates to come.
Climate Justice and Biodiversity
IOP Conference Series. Earth and Environmental Science; Sep 2022
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Global climate change is affecting both natural environment and human society. National governments engage in climate mitigation actions. Transnational agreements such as Paris Agreement and recent UN Climate change conference (COP 26) intend to foster global collaboration on tackling climate change. However, activities and policies aiming to address the problem may either undermine integrity of the natural environment and human society or can contribute to sustainable development. Here climate justice plays the central role. Pursuing climate justice paradigm, may environmental organizations to prove central role of forest conservation in mitigation of climate change. This is likely to allow avoiding trade-offs between clime, economic development and biodiversity conservation objectives. Multiple real live examples demonstrate the potential of climate justice as a central principle of climate actions to allow finding win-win solutions. The central principle of climate actions and policies should be avoiding harm to biodiversity and indigenous peoples. The approach is likely to ensure sustainable development and success in addressing climate change.
Well Grounded: Indigenous Peoples' Knowledge, Ethnobiology and Sustainability People and Nature, Jun 2022 The biological knowledge and associated values and beliefs of Indigenous and other long‐resident Peoples are often overlooked and underrepresented in governance, planning and decision‐making at local, regional, national and international levels. Ethnobiology—the study of the dynamic relationships among peoples, biota and environments—is a field that places Indigenous Peoples' ecological knowledge and ways of knowing at the forefront of research interests, particularly in relation to the importance of biocultural diversity in sustaining the Earth's Ecosystems.In this paper, we examine the nature and significance of Indigenous Peoples' knowledge systems concerning environmental sustainability, as documented in collaborative ethnobiological research. We emphasize the diverse aspects of Indigenous knowledge in conservation, and the role played by ethnobiologists in respectfully highlighting this knowledge, and link these to the Intergovernmental Science‐Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services Global Assessment's key levers and leverage points for enabling the transformative change required for achieving more sustainable lifeways.

Featured Videos

There are some DVDs you can check out from the library on environmental topics as well. The links here, however, are largely for online videos as there are so many great organizations with content. Streaming education films can also be searched in the database Films on Demand, linked in the "Digging Deeper in Your Research" tab of this guide, or from the library's homepage.

Nature and Climate Change We follow scientists and inventors as they turn to nature to help us cope with a warming world.
Arctic Peril A 45-min film, streaming on Films on Demand
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"English endurance swimmer Lewis Pugh braves icy Arctic Ocean waters to raise awareness of global warming. Scientists chart how pollution and climate change in the Arctic are affecting the local wildlife, ecosystems and indigenous populations that depend on the world’s most pristine but least understood ocean."
The Fish Sanctuary A video by Inka Cresswell
The Aral Sea Ecological Disaster A 2018, 26-minute film streaming on Films on Demand
How to Save Our Planet A short 2019 film narrated by Sir David Attenborough from the WWF International
5 Human Impacts on the Environment A 2013 short video from Crash Course Ecology

Featured Podcasts

The Sustainable Jungle Podcast
"The Sustainable Jungle Podcast is a mission driven show, focusing on solutions for the world’s sustainability and conservation challenges. ...Join us as we create a place to encourage and galvanize positive change."
The Yikes Podcast
"Yikes is a podcast which leans into the Yikes of the world rather than letting it overwhelm us. We breakdown the issues in an accessible intersectional and nuanced way to guide us towards action together"

Featured Books & eBooks - click on titles to access

Saving a Million Species: Extinction Risk from Climate Change

Main Collection

Vanishing America: Species Extinction, Racial Peril, and the Origins of Conservation

Sacred Species and Sites: Advances in Biocultural Conservation

Biodiversity and Health in the Face of Climate Change