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INNOVATION IN TROPICAL FOREST CONSERVATION SERIES Despite decades of attention and advocacy, tropical forests are still falling at rapid rates worldwide. Now, mongabay.com's new special series, Innovation in Tropical Forest Conservation aims to highlight solutions to the crisis through short interviews with some of the world's leading conservation scientists, practitioners, and thinkers about new and emerging approaches to conservation. For more of these interviews, please check our Innovation in Tropical Forest Conservation feed. Ariel Lugo overlooking an urban watershed in Puerto Rico. Photo courtesy of Ariel Lugo. Think first before you eradicate non-native species says Dr. Ariel E. Lugo, the current director of the International Institute of Tropical Forestry within the USDA Forest Service, based in Puerto Rico. Lugo, an accomplished ecologist, supports the idea that both native and non-native plants have important roles to play in conservation efforts. “Many conser

  The Puerto Rican promoting the assembly of a monumental statue of Columbus, as tall as New York's Statue of Liberty and taller than any other in the Americas, wants Spain's king and queen to inaugurate the monument in the spring of 2016. Entrepreneur Jose Gonzalez Freire told Efe Tuesday in an interview that his goal is to take advantage of the Spanish royals' possible visit to the Caribbean island for the 7th International Congress of the Spanish Language, also scheduled for the spring of 2016. "We believe construction will be completed between late 2015 and early 2016, which gave us the idea that the king and queen could take part in the ribbon-cutting ceremony," said the entrepreneur, owner of the food company Pan American Grain, one of Puerto Rico's largest concerns. Completed in 1991, its Russian creator Zurab Tsereteli tried to install the mega-statue a year later in the United States, but local authorities denied him the necessary permits. The municip