The McCann et al. paper on the importance of weak interactions wasn't among the suggested readings for either Monday's lecture or today's, and so far as I can tell, all of the links to readings are working. If you have trouble with one, please e-mail me and let me know which one it is.
The General Accounting Office just released a report on implementation of the U.S. Endangered Species Act (http://www.gao.gov/cgi-bin/getrpt?GAO-03-803). According to an article in Science, the GAO concludes "that decisions governing which species should be protected and how much habitat should be set aside for their recovery 'are generally based on the best available science.'" It also finds "that the process of designating the critical habitat that endangered populations need to recover has become dominated by litigation, sapping much of the agency's ESA funding."
The issue of Conservation Biology that just arrived on my desk also has several articles that caught my eye: