Environmental conservation efforts have traditionally focused on protecting individual species or natural resources. Scientists are discovering, however, that preserving the benefits that whole ecosystems provide to people is more economically and environmentally valuable.

For years residents of Cape Cod and the Islands have been promised that the Cape Wind project, a 25 square mile (the size of Manhattan Island) array of 130 440' tall wind turbines, would lower their electricity rates. Remember: “The Wind is Free?”

Anti-whaling protesters say they are preventing Japanese whalers from resuming their operations in the Southern Ocean.

Agricultural expansion rather than shrimp farming is the major factor responsible for the destruction of tropical mangrove forests in the tsunami-impacted regions of Indonesia, Malaysia, Thailand, Myanmar, Bangladesh, India, and Sri Lanka, according to a new study published in the Journal of Biogeography.

The definition of conservation priorities for biodiversity often focuses only on the numbers of vertebrate animals and seed plants in the northern hemisphere or in the tropics.

The answer to a mystery that long has puzzled biologists may lie in prehistoric Polynesians' penchant for pretty white shells, a research team headed by University of Michigan mollusk expert Diarmaid Ó Foighil has found.

Modern conservation techniques have brought us the resurgence of American bald eagles, sustainable forest harvests and the rescue of prized lobster fisheries. So how can modern conservation strategies also have wrought such failures, from the catastrophic loss of Guatemalan forests to the economy-crippling Klamath River salmon kill in 2006".

A trio of new studies published in Science this week provides examples of successful conservation efforts on three continents.