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"New research indicates that the middle [of the food chain] -small insectivorous birds and lizards-are critically important to overall health of an ecosystem, and actually help promote greater biomass." "Gruner and a team of other researchers looked at more than 100 studies insect predation by birds, bats or lizards and found that, regardless of the predator in question, their presence was associated with a 40 percent reduction in damage to plants. In turn, a healthy population of insectivores was linked to a 14 percent increase in plant biomass."

The State and Federal government announced today that they would "pursue other alternative sources of energy, namely gas, to meet Sabah's power supply needs." Proposed for an undeveloped beach on the north-eastern coast of Borneo, the coal plant, according to critics, would have threatened the Coral Triangle, one of the world's most biodiverse marine ecosystems, and Tabin Wildlife Reserve, home to Critically Endangered Sumatran rhinos and Bornean orangutans. Local fishermen feared that discharges from the plant would have imperiled their livelihood.

Indonesia will rehabilitate degraded forests and plant millions of hectares of new forests to meet its target of reducing greenhouse gas emissions 26 percent from projected levels by 2020, reports Reuters.

Current conservation list criticised for being biased towards vertebrates and neglecting most plants, fungi and invertebrates.

Maps in the new Atlas of Global Conservation show the diversity of bird, animal and plant species populations, which are among 80 that scientists have produced for a comprehensive look at the planet's eco-regions. The maps crosses three types of habitats that exist: terrestrial, freshwater, and marine.

"Apparently bees' immune systems are healthier when they are fed pollen from a wider variety of plants than when they eat only one thing."

The seed dispersal activities of many animals is essential for the Amazon and other forests, because, as Anderson explains: "plants rely on the seed dispersal activities of these animals (i.e. birds, bats, monkeys, tapirs, rodents, and fish) to move seeds away from the mother tree to good sites for germination […] For pioneer species like Cecropia (a genus of tree that we studied), seeds might need light gaps to germinate-that is, seeds might have very specific requirements for germination."

"Forres-based charity Trees for Life will keep the six animals in a 30.4 acre enclosure on its Dundreggan Estate in Glen Moriston, Inverness-shire. It hopes the boar will control the spread of bracken which shades out other wild plants. Once a native species, the mammal was hunted to extinction in the UK by the 13th Century. "