Word: ecosystems
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...live in one of the last five scraps of country in the Lower 48 that are still wild enough to support even a vestigial population of grizzlies. In the U.S., the great bear has been reduced to near prisoner status, surviving only for certain in the Greater Yellowstone ecosystem (anywhere from 200 to 600 bears); the Northern Continental Divide of Montana (400 to 500); the Selkirk population in northern Idaho (30 to 40); an enclave in northern Washington State; and, most imperiled, Montana's Cabinet-Yaak ecosystem, where perhaps two dozen survive. Lewis and Clark passed near here...
...security in all the various seasons. Sometimes the Forest Service closes gates to various logging roads to help give the bears security from humans, but the opening and closing of these roads is erratic, unpredictable to the bears and their maternal culture of instruction. In the Northern Continental Divide ecosystem--Lewis and Clark country--153 grizzlies are known to have been lost to human causes since 1990, including 19 in the year 2001 alone, among them nine females...
...using explosive devices here to stun their prey and bring it to the surface. It takes only a few hours to bomb out an area of hundreds of square meters, securing a full haul but causing irreparable damage to the live coral at the base of a reef's ecosystem. Fishermen use homemade fertilizer bombs, dynamite and even ordnance left over from World War II. The return is quick and lucrative, netting them many times over what they would make using conventional methods. But once bombed, the area is devoid of life for decades...
First it was rising seas and altered weather. Now, say experts writing in Science, global warming is helping spread disease as well--not just in humans but also in oysters, butterflies, birds and plants. Says co-author Richard Ostfeld of the Institute of Ecosystem Studies in Millbrook, N.Y.: "The evidence cuts across so many diseases and organisms that it has us quite alarmed...
...architect on a $2 billion project to rejuvenate Ford's massive River Rouge plant; Braungart helped found Germany's Green Party. Rather than flog humans for being wasteful beasts, they celebrate our propensity to consume, insisting there are ways to make that impulse a healthy part of a dynamic ecosystem. In Cradle to Cradle, the authors question why shampoo bottles, yogurt containers, and candy wrappers aren't made of biodegradable material. Why can't trainers be designed to eventually fertilize your tomatoes?or be reassembled into a new pair of shoes? The cynical response is that increased costs...