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There
is a vast and rapidly growing library of information
on biodiversity, and much of it is easily accessible via the World Wide
Web. Any Internet search engine will answer a call for "biodiversity"
with thousands of pointers to sites. Some are excellent, some are awful,
and many are out of date or have changed their addresses since they
were listed.
Some of the sources that
have proven to be useful are listed here:
Museums and gardens
There are links to worldwide gardens, museums, zoos, and collections
at several sites. One of them is at www.123world.com/museumsandgalleries.
Others include the Electronic
Zoo, the
WWW Virtual Library of Zoos, a listing of
Public Aquaria from the Fish Information Service, and
Botanical Gardens Online.
Some individual sites include
Daniel Janzen’s Species Page; the
United States National Arboretum,
Royal Botanic Gardens at Kew, UK, and the
New York Botanical Garden. Also the
Sierra de Manantlán Biosphere Reserve, where two first-round Bay
Award winners do their research;
Australian National Botanic Gardens; the
Botanical Museum of Finland;
Canadian Botanical Conservation Network; and
National Tropical Botanical Garden in Hawaii. The University of
Washington (U.S.) maintains a site describing its
Medicinal Herb Garden.
The American
Zoo and Aquarium Association has a Web site;
Biological Collections Via the Internet features linkages to everything
from spiders to medicinal plants. (Unfortunately, several of the links
are not functional.) The American Museum of Natural History provides
several on-line tours of exhibits in its
Hall of Biodiversity, and the
California Academy of Sciences has an impressive Web site, as does
the San Francisco Exploratorium.
The Field Museum in Chicago
offers chances to see Sue, the recently restored dinosaur skeleton.
The
Natural History Museum of the United Kingdom discusses measuring
biodiversity's value and includes several maps of world diversity.
Research organizations
The S.R. Noble Foundation
studies issues pertaining to agricultural diversity (and is the home
station of Bay Award winner Marilyn J. Roossinck). Links to organizations
that have participated with the Foundations in the Awards project, all
of which have strong interests in conserving and protecting biological
diversity, are listed on the page named "About
the Awards".
International groups
International organizations working on biodiversity issues include
the World Bank,
Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research (CGIAR),
and Diversitas. In the
United States, the World Resources
Institute is a premier source of data on biodiversity and other
issues related to Earth’s sustainability.
The Woods
Hole Research Center is active in several areas of measuring biodiversity
conservation. Several agencies of the United Nations have programs in
biodiversity; they include the UN Environment
Programme and UN Development Programme.
And the Center for Marine Conservation
is a premier organization dedicated to protecting the diversity of the
oceans.
In the United States, government agencies
maintain several Web sites concerning biological diversity. They include
the U.S. Geological Survey and
National Biological Information Infrastructure.
In southern Africa, the home of Award winner Woody Cotterill, the
Zambezi Society is a major force behind the effort to identify and
conserve the natural riches of an important river basin.
Endangered species
There is a good deal of information on endangered and threatened
species, a reflection of the seriousness of the problem. These include
Endangered Species,
the site of Bay Award winners Susan Middleton and David Liittschwager;
the Hawaii Biological
Survey Web Site; and
Alberta’s Endangered Species. The sudden die-off in frogs is documented
on the Web by the
Declining Amphibian Populations Task Force. The U.S.’s space agency,
NASA, devotes a site to
Satellite Tracking of Endangered Species. And young people might
want to visit the
Yahooligans! Endangered Animals pages.
Environmental groups
Environmental and conservation organizations include the
International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN);
World Wildlife Fund; Conservation
International, and
Rainforest Alliance.
Basic documents
Basic documents of biodiversity include the
Convention on Biological Diversity, a product of the Earth Summit,
and the Convention on International
Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora (CITES). The
US National Library for the Environment
seeks to "improve the scientific basis for making environmental
decisions". Its collections include a Virtual Library of Biodiversity,
Ecology, and Environment, in collaboration with Center for Conservation
Biology Network at Rice University.
Species and their names
The Web was tailor made for collections of species names. Lists
may be found at the
Tree of Life and the World Species List. For a look at the man who
gathered all the names into a coherent compendium, see the
Linnean Society of London, which is sponsored by one of several
organizations dedicated to honoring the Swedish naturalist.
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