Some things you can do ...
(The following can also be adapted into excellent science projects
to do with children):
Buy organic and local food, rather than imported. Choose diversity
in your food. According to Kenny Ausubel, author of Seeds of Change (Harper
Collins, 1994, $18), only nine food plants account for 3/4 of the human
diet.
Grow an organic garden based on nurturing, not chemical control.
Plant groundcover such as ivy or jasmine to prevent soil erosion. Add plants
that attract pollinators to your garden. Send the Brooklyn Botanic a SASE
and request a free-to-Green Guide readers "Pollinators List" of
plants, by region and season, Attn: Publications Dept., Brooklyn Botanic
Gardens, 1000 Washington Ave., Brooklyn, NY 11225.
Set up a bat house (bats are also pollinators). Contact Bat Conservation
International, (512) 327-9721.
Take a child birdwatching, wherever you live. Urban Roosts: Where
Birds Nest in the City, by Barbara Bash (Sierra Club/Little Brown, $5.95)
shows how finches, sparrows, peregrines and owls find homes on skyscraper
ledges, in traffic lights, and more.
Choose certified wood and wood products. Contact the SmartWood
Program of the Rainforest Alliance, (212) 677-1899, or the Good Wood Alliance,
(802) 862-4448.
Do your part, not only to tread lightly on the earth, but also to help
check the expansion of new treaders by supporting population control. |
 More than 500 of our domestic species
already may have disappeared forever, and about one-third of U.S. plant
and animal species are threatened, according to a 1997 report by the Nature
Conservancy with the Natural Heritage Network. Globally, according to the
Species Survival Commission of the World Conservation Union ("The Red
List of Threatened Animals," October, 1996), nearly a quarter of all
known species of mammals and 11 percent of all known bird species are threatened.
The unknown is vast. Only about 13 percent of the total number of species
on earth have been scientifically described, reports the United Nations
Environment Program's (UNEP) November 1995 Global Biodiversity Assessment.
And while we should fight against the disappearance of the world's last
wild tigers, reduced from 100,000 strong at the turn of the century to 3,000
to 5,000 now, we should not overlook the passing of the humble toad.
According to the Declining Amphibian
Populations Task Force (DAPTF), amphibians provide an early warning about
deteriorating environments. The largest breeding population of the flatlands
salamander, native to the U.S. Southeast, has virtually disappeared. Strange
deformities grotesquely misshapen limbs, smaller-than-normal sex organs,
missing eyes have been reported in frogs across Minnesota. The Houston toad
is on the brink of extinction due to habitat loss.
In the United States, amphibians,
shellfish and fish "that depend on freshwater habitats... are in the
worst condition overall," the Nature Conservancy reports. Amphibians,
DAPTF says, are particularly vulnerable to environmental degradation because
of their permeable skin, and because they rely on both land and water for
survival.
"If we cannot act as responsible
stewards in our own backyards, the long-term prospects for biological diversity
in the rest of this planet are grim indeed," laments Dennis Murphy,
senior research scientist at the Center for Conservation Biology at Stanford
University, in the National Academy of Sciences (NAS) 1986 report "Biodiversity."
Biological diversity, or biodiversity, is the variety of life on earth,
including ecosystems and species.
The loss of biodiversity is "the
most fundamental issue" for the environment, according to Thomas Lovejoy,
Ph.D., of the Smithsonian Institute. A University of Minnesota study of
native prairie plants, published this year, has shown, for the first time,
that a greater number of species improves the productivity of an ecosystem.
The planet's most remote life forms
have been affected. "The amazing finding, in the past year, is that
even birds whose homes are in the middle of the ocean, such as the albatross,
have been contaminated by organochlorine chemicals," says Pete Myers,
Ph.D., director of the W. Alton Jones Foundation and coauthor of Our
Stolen Future (Plume/Penquin, 1997), which chronicles the adverse effects
of hormone-disrupting and carcinogenic chemicals, such as PCBs, DDT and
dioxins, upon wildlife. Our lifestyle is what is fueling the destruction,
but we can change that. As David Quammen writes in The Song of the Dodo
(Scribner's, 1996), "The number of children you produce, the number
of miles you drive... all have their impacts on... the cohesiveness of ecosystems."
Preserving habitat is crucial. The conversion of open space to residential
and commercial developments disrupts biodiversity, whose "...single
greatest threat... is the destruction of natural habitats and their conversion
to other uses," Dennis Murphy writes. |
... and some things to avoid
Coral and ivory jewelry.
Shoes by Adidas, Browning, Florscheim, and Puma, which use skins from
threatened Australian kangaroos for leather, according to the International
Wildlife Coalition.
Mitsubishi cars, Nikon cameras, Texaco gas, and Georgia-Pacific wood.
These companies contribute to rainforest destruction, according to the Rainforest
Action Network, (415) 398-4404. Write the above companies and tell them
why you boycott their products.
Pesticides (that includes herbicides) in your home and garden.
Unnecessary driving.
Groups that oppose habitat destruction
Southwest Center for Biological Diversity, PO Box 710, Tucson AZ 85702
Sierra Club, San Diego, (619) 299-1741, 3820 Ray St., San Diego CA 92104
The Nature Conservancy, (703) 841-5300
Ducks Unlimited, Inc., (901) 758-3825
The Forgotten Pollinators Campaign, 2021 N. Kinney Rd., Tucson, AZ 85743
International Wildlife Coalition, (508) 548-8328 |
Wetlands: These forested swamps,
marshes, bogs, and prairie potholes provide habitat for about one-half of
the fish, one-third of the birds, one-fourth of the plants, and one-sixth
of the mammals on the U.S. threatened and endangered species lists. About
half of the estimated 220 million acres of wetlands that existed in Pre-Columbian
America have been lost to crop production and, increasingly, to residential
and commercial development. In Los Angeles, Steven Spielberg's planned 1,000-acre
"Dreamworks" studio would destroy one of the area's last wetlands.
Forests:
According to "Last Frontier Forests: Ecosystems and Economies on the
Edge," a report released by World Resources Institute (WRI) on March
4, 1997, only 20 percent of the world's major virgin forests remain. WRI
reports that the United States only has 1 percent of its original forest
cover left. That includes Alaska's Tongass National Forest, home to threatened
species like the Sitka black-tailed deer and its predator, the Alexander
Archipelago wolf, and the Hawaiian rainforests, which contain indigenous
species found nowhere else on earth.
Northern and Neotropical habitats
are linked by species like migratory songbirds, who live in both. In 1996,
researchers from Hawk Mountain Sanctuary in Pennsylvania, Tufts University,
and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service discovered a possible connection
between pesticide use, in Latin America and the United States, and migratory
populations of U.S. sharp-shinned hawks. The hawks' blood samples contained
a number of chemicals, including DDE (the metabolite of DDT) and chlorinated
hydrocarbons. The study theorizes that the hawks' exposure came through
eating songbirds migrating from Latin American countries. (Pesticides like
DDT persist for many years.) "The songbirds eat insects that have been
sprayed with chemicals. Then the hawks eat the contaminated songbirds,"
says Len Soucy, Ph.D., of the Raptor Trust in Millington, New Jersey, who
has observed a decline in migratory populations of this important indicator
species. At the same time, overall breeding populations of hawks in Pennsylvania
are increasing "from their pesticide-induced lows earlier in the century,"
says Keith Dildstein, Ph.D., a researcher at Hawk Mountain. Dr. Dildstein
attributes the recovery to "... forest restoration and the banning
of DDT (in the U.S.)." |
Other resources
Kids' Book: Where Once There Was a Wood, by Denise Fleming
(Holt, 1996, $15.95), a picture book, shows the species that once lived
in our backyards, and tells how to make your backyard a better shelter for
all kinds of species.
For adults: In Search of Nature, by E. O. Wilson (Island
Press, 1996, $19.95), is a collection of short essays about the interrelationship
between animals and humans. And, newly out in paperback: Our Stolen Future,
by Theo Colborn, Dianne Dumanoski, and John Peterson Myers (Plume/Penguin,
1997, $13.95) |
"Soil governs the productivity
of plants and, therefore, the sustainability of agriculture, forestry, and
natural ecosystems," writes Rita Colwell, president of the University
of Maryland's Biotechnology Institute, in the 1997 NAS report, "Biodiversity
II." Just a spoonful of healthy soil contains more microorganisms than
there are people on earth, including bacteria, fungi, worms, tiny arthropods
and millipedes. And recently, a compound from soil bacteria has proven to
be exceptionally effective against Kaposi's Sarcoma, a skin cancer afflicting
AIDS sufferers.
According to E.O. Wilson, Ph.D.,
an entomologist at Harvard University considered the world's leading expert
on biodiversity, if all the invertebrates (including insects and bacteria)
disappeared tomorrow, our own species could last no more than a few months.
We depend on their endless work of breaking down and recycling dead plant
and animal matter, Wilson writes in In Search of Nature (Island Press,
1996). On the other hand, Wilson says, if humans disappeared tomorrow, the
earth would go on with little change. |
 |
Our modern agriculture is dependent
on just a few crops, but the gene pool of wild and diverse plants is crucial
to maintaining our food supply. Wild plants are crossbred with domesticated
plants to increase disease and pest resistance, crop yields, and nutritional
quality. For example, in the 1970s, genetic material from several wild corn
species originating in Mexico were used to stop a blight which had previously
wiped out 15 percent of the U.S. corn crop.
The U.S. demand for exotic, out-of-season
produce can stimulate pesticide-heavy agriculture in developing countries.
Some pesticides "volatilize" says Pete Myers. "That is one
reason that our American eagerness to buy tropically grown fruits and vegetables
comes back to haunt us. Chemicals used in the tropics evaporate and are
carried by air currents to the North, where they are deposited."
In "Biodiversity," Dennis
Murphy of Stanford describes this scene from the shores of the San Francisco
Bay just 150 years ago: "Jaws, claws, an explosion of spray, and a
grizzly emerges from the shallows, a salmon in its grasp. Mixed herds of
elk, deer, and pronghorn antelope graze rolling, grassy slopes. A cougar
surveys from broken chaparral and woodland above." What will our great-grandchildren
see, 150 years from now? The answer depends on us.  |
ast fall I visited Monteverde in Costa
Rica, a "bird and beast paradise," according to my guidebook,
and home to the golden toad, which is found nowhere else in the world. I
never saw a golden toad. Neither has anyone else, since 1988. At the same
time, reports were surfacing about mysterious disappearances of amphibians
from places where they once thrived, including many areas of the United
States. In the general crash of species worldwide, there's a tendency to
feel more alarmed about the shrinking of tropical rainforests than about
habitats in the United States, including our own backyards. I realized that
it is time to look out for domestic species, as well.
mothers.org. West Coast Regional Office: 870 Market Street, Room 654, San Francisco, CA 94102; email: westcoast