Word: ecosystems
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...pests. "Introduced species are one of the principal causes of endangerment for half of endangered species," says Daniel Simberloff, a professor of ecology and evolutionary biology at the University of Tennessee. Cracking down on at least one invader that has yet to get a real finhold in the ecosystem may not be much, but it's better than letting it through...
...long) were retrieved from samples of leaf litter as part of a biological dragnet conducted in 1998 for the Central Park Conservancy by researchers Liz Johnson and Kefyn Catley of the American Museum of Natural History. Their mission: to assess the health of the park's somewhat trampled woodland ecosystem in order to better preserve it. The creatures they collected were sorted and sent to various taxonomists for positive ID, which is how this one ended up in the hands of Richard Hoffman, curator of invertebrates at the Virginia Museum of Natural History...
...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...