Word: ecosystems
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...recent years the whaling industry has been trying out a different defense - that whale populations need to be culled to reduce their threat to fast-disappearing fish stocks. Whales, after all, eat a lot of seafood, so it would make sense that controlling whale populations would be smart "ecosystem management," as whaling supporters put it. But a new article in the Feb. 13 issue of Science demonstrates that's hardly the case. "Essentially what we found was that...if you remove whales, it has a negligible impact on the biomass that is commercially available for fishing," says Leah Gerber...
...disaster in south Florida is invisible from above water but the damage is horrific. Hundreds of yards of sensitive coral reefs, part of the largest such ecosystem in the United States, have been sliced through by boats in two incidents over the last month. Indeed, because of choppy conditions, the assessment of the damage at one site, a mile offshore from the famed Breakers Hotel in Palm Beach, was not possible until this week. It is now believed that a cable line from a tug boat, or possibly lobster traps, cut a swath estimated at about 200 yards long...
Nevertheless, the reefs are declining because of human activity. A 2008 report by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration concluded that half of the U.S. reef ecosystem is in poor or fair condition and it foresees no improvement in the future. "Reefs all over the world and in the U.S. are suffering," says Dr. Richard Dodge, dean of Nova Southeastern University's Oceanographic Center in Dania Beach, Fla. Vessel-related damage continues to be a big problem, and the two latest incidents are just "one more nail in the coffin...
What makes the latest damage to the reefs so heartbreaking is that the condition of south Florida's reef ecosystem seemed to be improving this year, if ever so slightly. The state seemed to be doing its share to safeguard the natural treasure. Lawmakers, for example, agreed to a long-term timeline to prohibit water utilities from dumping partially-treated sewage into the ocean. Federal and state agencies also finally moved a commercial ship anchorage that had caused years of sustained reef damage off Port Everglades in Fort Lauderdale...
...historian Robert Wiebe's words, as a "search for order." America's giant industrial monopolies, the progressives believed, were turning capitalism into a jungle, a wild and lawless place where only the strong and savage survived. By the time Roosevelt took office during the Great Depression, the entire ecosystem appeared to be in a death spiral, with Americans crying out for government to take control. F.D.R. did - juicing the economy with unprecedented amounts of government cash, creating new protections for the unemployed and the elderly, and imposing rules for how industry was to behave. Conservatives wailed that economic freedom...