Monday, January 21, 2013

Biodiversity Law In Paradise (1/21/2013)

Green Iguana Reclining By The Ocean
The Biodiversity Law class finished up its visit to the Virgin Islands with a hike through the Nature Conservancy lands behind Magen's Bay.  As private biodiversity conservation efforts have become more significant, biodiversity law has evolved to provide new legal mechanisms to ensure that organisms and the ecological communities that contain them survive.  Clever legal tools, such as conservation easements, adapt existing law to new purposes, achieving more conservation per amount of money.  After exploring hillside rainforest, coastal mangrove swamp, beach, and coral reef, the class visited a local agricultural fair, where the economic products of both wild and domestic biodiversity were sold.  As the day came to an end, so did the 2013 Biodiversity Law fieldtrip.  Now, each student will begin work on a major research paper about a topic of biodiversity law inspired by their fieldtrip in the Virgin Islands.