Word: nutrient
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...Thirteen Everglades animals are now endangered species. Only about 30 Florida panthers remain, and in recent years several have been killed on roads cutting through the area. Half the original Everglades has been lost to development. Now the biggest threat comes not from bulldozers but in nutrient-laden runoff from sugarcane and vegetable farms that lie to the north, between the Everglades and its chief source of water, Lake Okeechobee...
...nature," says Jim Webb, regional director of the Wilderness Society, "but it has to be done." Florida's research shows that high levels of phosphates and nitrates from farm runoff have transformed more than 20,000 acres of Everglades saw grass into cattails. These intruders, which thrive in high-nutrient water, suck the oxygen from the marsh and suffocate aquatic life at the bottom of the Everglades food chain. On shallow ponds and canals, nutrient-fed algae grow so thick that they block the sun from underwater plants. So far, most of the damage is confined to Loxahatchee National Wildlife...
...when stripped of its trees, the land becomes inhospitable. Most of the Amazon's soil is nutrient poor and ill suited to agriculture. The rain forest has an uncanny capacity to flourish in soils that elsewhere would not even support weeds...
...sugar than run-of-the-mill fare. Result: animals that smell good, have shiny coats and do not excitedly jump about. Even the pet-food giants, which control most of the $6 billion industry, have started toeing the health-food line. Last year Ralston Purina introduced O.N.E., or Optimum Nutrient Effectiveness, for snooty canines. And Quaker Oats has revamped its Cycle products for young, old and overweight dogs...
That progress encompasses both flora and fauna. Inside the boundaries of the monument, where by law people are not allowed to assist regeneration, a mammalian equivalent of the bulldozer has been the pocket gopher. Colonies of these tiny industrious burrowers have helped mix the nutrient-poor ash and pumice with rich, pre-eruptive soil, creating a more hospitable turf for windblown seeds. Deer mice, ants and beetles have also assisted in the regeneration of the soil. Flowering lupine, with root nodules that convert nitrogen into compounds necessary for plant growth, has seized a foothold on the pumice plain, along with...