Environment

The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service today announced the availability of a Comprehensive Conservation Plan (CCP) that will guide management of Hakalau Forest National Wildlife Refuge for the next 15 years.

The CCP outlines refuge goals and strategies, staffing and funding needs, and management and research priorities.

A state survey backed by federal stimulus funds predicts that “green jobs” will grow by over 25 percent in the next two years.

The Hawaii State Department of Labor and Industrial Relations (DLIR) today released job projections related to Hawaii’s renewable energy and energy efficiency occupations, commonly known as “Green” Jobs. The report is a product of a $1.2 million competitive federal stimulus grant Hawaii was awarded a year ago.

An important – and hopeful – milestone in the conservation of the endangered short-tailed albatross was recorded at Midway Atoll National Wildlife Refuge in November.

On Nov. 16, refuge staff observed an adult short-tailed albatross incubating a freshly laid egg on Eastern Island, one of three small flat coral islands that comprise Midway Atoll National Wildlife Refuge about 1,200 miles northwest of Honolulu.

Current state-of-the-art global climate models predict substantial warming in response to increases in greenhouse gases such as carbon dioxide. The models, though, disagree widely in the magnitude of the warming we can expect.

In a paper recently published in the Journal of Climate, University of Hawai‘i at Mānoa researchers have assessed the performance of current global models in simulating clouds and have presented a new approach to determining the expected cloud feedbacks in a warmer climate.