China Starts Countdown To Save Biodiversity By 2010

September 27, 2007 , from The World Conservation Union .


As the rate of biodiversity loss accelerates worldwide, civil society organizations and governments are joining forces to fight the global extinction crisis. On September 7 in Beijing, twenty Chinese and international organizations signed the Countdown 2010 declaration, committing themselves to additional efforts to reduce biodiversity loss by the year 2010.

According to the 2007 IUCN Red List of Threatened Species, China has a "particularly large number" of species in danger of extinction. China is also one of the world’s biologically richest countries. At the Countdown 2010 Launch, organizations ranging from local Chinese NGOs to international organizations active in China to government-affiliated institutions joined together to declare their commitment to saving biodiversity in China. With this decision, they honor the global 2010 biodiversity target, a commitment made by state representatives at the World Summit on Sustainable Development in 2002 to significantly reduce biodiversity loss by 2010.

Countdown 2010 is a network of active partners working together towards the 2010 biodiversity target. Each partner commits to additional efforts to tackle the causes of biodiversity loss. The secretariat – hosted by the World Conservation Union (IUCN) – facilitates and encourages action, promotes the importance of the 2010 biodiversity target and assesses progress towards 2010. Countdown 2010 now has hubs in Europe, Asia, Africa and South America, and the establishment of a Countdown 2010 hub in China has been spearheaded by the IUCN China Program.

"We're excited to be bringing Countdown 2010 to China, one of the world's greatest storehouses of biodiversity," said Wiebke Herding, of the Countdown 2010 secretariat. "Countdown 2010 is starting with an impressive array of organizations here. I'm sure that by 2010 we'll see the positive impact of this network on China's biodiversity."

Prior to the Launch, a consultation was held with key partners to discuss how best to promote the 2010 biodiversity target in China. IUCN Chief Scientist Jeffrey A. McNeely led discussion on monitoring progress towards the 2010 biodiversity target, while others discussed communications challenges, civil society capacity needs, and the necessity of effective information exchange, offering concrete suggestions for potential actions to be taken by Countdown 2010 and partners.

11 new species found in central Vietnam

HANOI, Vietnam - Scientists have discovered 11 new species of plants and animals in Vietnam, including a snake, two butterflies and five orchid varieties, the World Wide Fund for Nature said Wednesday.
The new species were found in a remote region known as the "Green Corridor" in Thua Thien Hue province in central Vietnam, the international conservation group said.

"You only discover so many new species in very special places, and the Green Corridor is one of them," Chris Dickinson, the WWF's chief technical adviser in the region, said in a statement.

The new snake species, the white-lipped keelback, generally lives near streams and eats frogs and other small animals, the WWF said. It has a yellow-white stripe along its head, red dots on its body and can grow to more than 30 inches long.

The new butterfly species are among eight discovered in Thua Thien Hue since 1996. One is a "skipper," a butterfly that flies in a quick, darting motion.

Three of the new orchid species are leafless, which is unusual for orchids, the WWF said. The other new plant species include one in the aspidistra family, which produces a black flower and can subsist in low light, and an arum, which produces yellow flowers surrounded by funnel-shaped leaves.

"It's great news for Vietnam," said Bernard O'Callaghan, Vietnam program coordinator for the World Conservation Union. "The jungles and mountains of Vietnam are fascinating places and they continue to surprise scientists."

The WWF said all the new species are exclusive to tropical forests in Vietnam's Annamites mountain range. It said all the species in the area are under threat from illegal logging, hunting and development.

Two-headed turtle goes on display in Pa.

NORRISTOWN, Pa. - A pet store has bought a two-headed turtle from a collector and plans to keep it on display, the store manager said. The 2-month-old turtle, actually conjoined red-eared slider twins, fits on a silver dollar.

It has two heads sticking out from opposite ends of its shell, along with a pair of front feet on each side. But there is just one set of back feet and one tail.

The turtle is apparently healthy, and the species can live 15 to 20 years, said Jay Jacoby, manager of Big Al's Aquarium Supercenter in East Norriton. The turtle has not yet been named.

The store would not disclose how much it paid.

The same exotic-turtle collector sold another Big Al's store a conjoined-twin turtle about 20 years ago, Jacoby said. The man lives in Florida, but he declined to identify him.

SUNDALAND

The spectacular flora and fauna of the Sundaland Hotspot are succumbing to the explosive growth of industrial forestry in these islands and to the international animal trade that claims tigers, monkeys, and turtle species for food and medicine in other countries. Populations of the orangutan, found only in this hotspot, are in dramatic decline. Some of the last refuges of two Southeast Asia rhino species are also found on the islands of Java and Sumatra. Like many tropical areas, the forests are being cleared for commercial uses. Rubber, oil palm, and pulp production are three of the most detrimental forces facing biodiversity in the Sundaland Hotspot.

Overview
The Sundaland hotspot covers the western half of the Indo-Malayan archipelago, an arc of some 17,000 equatorial islands, and is dominated by two of the largest islands in the world: Borneo (725,000 km²) and Sumatra (427,300 km²). More than a million years ago, the islands of Sundaland were connected to mainland Asia. As sea levels changed during the Pleistocene, this connection periodically disappeared, eventually leading to the current isolation of the islands. The topography of the hotspot ranges from the hilly and mountainous regions of Sumatra and Borneo, where Mt. Kinabalu rises to 4,101 meters, to the fertile volcanic soils of Java and Bali, the former dominated by 23 active volcanoes. Granite and limestone mountains rising to 2,189 meters are the backbone of the Malay Peninsula. Politically, Sundaland covers a small portion of southern Thailand (provinces of Pattani, Yala, and Narathiwat); nearly all of Malaysia (nearly all of Peninsular Malaysia and the East Malaysian states of Sarawak and Sabah in northern Borneo); Singapore at the tip of the Malay Peninsula; all of Brunei Darussalam; and all of the western half of the megadiversity country of Indonesia, including Kalimantan (the Indonesian portion of Borneo, Sumatra, Java, and Bali). The Nicobar Islands, which are under Indian jurisdiction, are also included. Sundaland is bordered by three hotspots. The boundary between the Sundaland Hotspot and the Indo-Burma Hotspot to the northwest is here taken as the Kangar-Pattani Line, which crosses the Thailand-Malaysia border. Wallacea lies immediately to the east of the Sundaland Hotspot, separated by the famous Wallaceâ??s Line, while the 7,100 islands of the Philippines Hotspot lie immediately to the northeast. Lowland rainforests are dominated by the towering trees of the family Dipterocarpaceae. Sandy and rocky coastlines harbor stands of beach forest, while muddy shores are lined with mangrove forests, replaced inland by large peat swamp forests. In some places, ancient uplifted coral reefs support specialized forests tolerant of the high levels of calcium and magnesium in these soils. Infertile tertiary sandstone ridges support heath forest. Higher elevations boast montane forests thick with moss, lichens, and orchids, while further up, scrubby subalpine forests are dominated by rhododendrons. At the very tops of the highest mountain peaks, the land is mostly rocky and without much vegetation.

Unique and Threatened Biodiversity of Sundaland

PLANTS
Sundaland is one of the biologically richest hotspots on Earth, holding about 25,000 species of vascular plants, 15,000 (60 percent) of which are found nowhere else. One plant family, the Scyphostegiaceae, is confined to the hotspot and is represented by a single tree species, Scyphostegia borneensis from Borneo. There are at least 117 endemic plant genera in the hotspot; 59 of these endemic genera are found in Borneo, 17 in Sumatra, and 41 on the Malay Peninsula. Borneo boasts a spectacular diversity of trees. There are about 3,000 species, including more than 265 species of dipterocarps; no less than 155 of these are endemic to the island. Borneo also has more than 2,000 species of orchids. The other islands are less diverse than Borneo but still boast an impressive variety of plant life. Sumatran forests include more than 100 dipterocarp species, nearly a dozen of which are endemic, and Java has more than 270 endemic orchids. Notable plants in the hotspot include members of the genus Rafflesia, represented by 16 species with very large flowers. One of these, Rafflesia arnoldii, has the largest flowers in the world, measuring up to one meter in diameter.


VERTEBRATES

1. Birds
Of the approximately 770 bird species that regularly occur in Sundaland, nearly 150 are endemic; around 40 of these endemic species are threatened. Borneo alone supports nearly 30 endemic species, most of which are montane species. As such, the Bornean Mountains, with 20 species confined to this EBA, are considered one of five Endemic Bird Areas (EBAs) recognized by BirdLife International in this hotspot, in addition to Sumatra and Peninsular Malaysia, Enggano, the Java and Bali Forests, and the Javan Coastal Zone. Native species include the Bali starling ( Leucopsar rothschildi, CR), a species endemic to Bali island and whose wild population fell to only six birds in 2001 due largely to trapping for the illegal cage-bird trade, and the Javan hawk-eagle ( Spizaetus bartelsi, EN), estimated to number around 300-450 surviving pairs. The Javanese lapwing ( Vanellus macropterus, CR), which once inhabited river deltas and marshes in the west and east, has not been recorded since 1940 and is considered Possibly Extinct.

2. Mammals
Of Sundaland's more than 380 mammal species, over 170 are endemic to the hotspot. In addition, 17 of 136 genera are endemic. Borneo boasts the most endemic mammal species of any island in the hotspot, with over 25 species found nowhere else. Of special interest are the four Mentawai Islands off the west coast of Sumatra (Siberut, Sipora, North Pagai, and South Pagai). These small islands, covering only 5,951 km², are home to fully four endemic species of primates, including the endemic genus Simias , the pig-tailed langur. Of all of Sundaland's diverse and threatened species, the best symbols of the vital need for conservation in the hotspot are its large mammals. The best known of these are the orang-utans, represented by two species: the Bornean ( Pongo pygmaeus, EN), and the Sumatran ( Pongo abelii , CR), the latter of which had an estimated 3,500 individuals surviving in the wild in Sumatra at the end of 2002. Orang-utans, which mature slowly and have a low reproductive rate, are threatened by habitat loss due to logging, fires, and agricultural conversion. Once reduced, their populations can take many years to recover. Other famous flagships include the Proboscis monkey ( Nasalis larvatus, EN), found only on Borneo, and two rhinoceros species, which are the most threatened and least known of the five surviving rhino species on Earth. The Javan rhino ( Rhinoceros sondaicus, CR), which was once found throughout Southeast Asia, is now represented by only about 40-50 individuals, most surviving in Ujung Kulong National Park in West Java, with no more than six animals outside the hotspot in Nam Cat Tien National Park in Vietnam. The Sumatran rhino ( Dicerorhinos sumatrensis, CR) ranged as far as Assam and Myanmar in the past. It is now believed to remain only in Sumatra, Peninsular Malaysia, and Sabah. Both rhinoceros species are severely threatened by poaching.

3. Reptiles
Reptile endemism is impressive in Sundaland. There are over 450 species of reptiles, roughly 250 of which are endemic, including 24 genera. There are also three endemic reptile families: two snake families, Anomochilidae and Xenophidiidae, and the monotypic Lanthanotidae, represented by the very rare and little known Bornean earless monitor lizard ( Lanthanotus borneensis), a remnant of ancient fauna in the region. One of the most distinctive reptiles in the hotspot is the endemic false gharial ( Tomistoma schlegelii, EN), a freshwater crocodilian species that can grow up to 4.7 meters in length and is found mostly in Sumatra and Borneo. Other threatened reptiles include two species of large river terrapins: the mangrove terrapin ( Batagur baska, CR) and the painted terrapin ( Callagur borneoensis, CR). Both species inhabit creeks and estuaries and have been extirpated from large portions of their range. The hotspot is also home to several Endangered and Vulnerable species of tortoises and freshwater turtles.

4. Amphibians

The Sundaland hotspot is home to more than 240 species of amphibians, nearly 200 of which are endemic. Seven genera are endemic, including the slender toads ( Leptophryne, comprising two species), and three with single species: Pseudobufo, Phrynella, and Gastrophrynoides. The amphibian fauna of Sundaland remains extremely poorly known, and Sumatra, in particular, represents a very high research priority.

5.Freshwater Fishes

Nearly 200 species of fish have been discovered in the rivers, lakes and swamps of Sundaland in just the last decade. There are currently about 1,000 known species of freshwater fish in the hotspot (out of a projected 1,400), more than a quarter of which are restricted to one or more of the main islands. Once again, Borneo tops the list, with about 430 species, more than 160 of which are endemic. One of the best known fish species in the hotspot is the dramatic Asian bony tongue or golden arowana ( Scleropages formosus, EN), a highly prized aquarium fish that can sell for thousands of dollars per animal.

UN names Noosa a "biodiversity museum"

NOOSA Shire has been named a "biodiversity museum" by the United Nations – the first such recognition of any site in Queensland.
The nomination recognises an environmentally sound balance between people and environmental protection.
It was also seized on by anti-amalgamation campaigners as further proof the shire should not be merged with its southern neighbours.
The nomination said the shire was "critical to maintaining overall biodiversity representation and quality in southeast Queensland".
"In order to conserve and use in a sustainable way the rich natural and cultural resources of the site, Noosa communities endeavour to manage urban growth in a sustainable manner and develop sustainable tourism strategies in the buffer and transition zones."
The anti-amalgamation group Friends of Noosa will now start a letter-writing campaign to Premier Anna Bligh, asking what she is doing to save the region.

DNA barcodes 'tackle disease, protect biodiversity'

21 September 2007

A mosquito of the culex genus, which transmits West Nile virus

DNA 'barcoding' offers rapid and low cost ways to monitor human disease vectors and biodiversity in developing countries, scientists told a conference this week.

The comments came during the Second International Barcode of Life Conference in Taipei, Taiwan (18–20 September).

The technique identifies known species and records new ones by sequencing a specific, short area of mitochondrial DNA, previously identified and agreed by scientists.

This "barcode region" of mitochondrial DNA mutates at a rate fast enough to create differences between species, but slow enough to leave members of the same species with nearly identical barcodes. Species that divided recently or are still interbreeding can be difficult to separate using this method.

Comparing the sequence to all others in a database produces a picture of how similar the specimens are. The process takes a few hours and costs as little as US$2.

Yvonne-Marie Linton of the UK's Natural History Museum, and leader of the Mosquito Barcoding Initiative, told SciDev.Net that barcoding should help control mosquitoes carrying diseases like malaria, West Nile disease and dengue fever.

"Often only one or two mosquito species are capable of transmitting disease," she says.

"It is important to know exactly which these are and then we can tie this information in with the ecology of these species, work out where they breed and use larvicidal techniques to control the mosquitoes, not 'blanketly' spray all of them."

And Eldredge Bermingham, acting director of the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute in Panama, says DNA barcoding helps to identify and protect tropical biodiversity. The Institute has collected many samples that are as yet unclassified and DNA barcoding lets non-experts help classify these cheaply.

"Barcoding efforts based in labs in Mexico, Brazil, Argentina and Panama are discovering new species, and providing geo-referenced data for informed conservation decisions," Bermingham told SciDev.Net.

But David Schindel, executive secretary of the Consortium for the Barcode of Life, based in Washington DC, United States, explains that barcoding's low cost reflects only the sequencing.

Building a reference library of barcode sequences is more expensive.

"Borrowing a book from a public library is free, but someone had to pay for writing and printing and buying the books in the library," he points out.

Balancing The Biodiversity Account

Fall 2003


When you write a check for more money than you have in your account, the check bounces and you get a “nasty-gram” from the bank, which assesses a fee as a penalty for overdrawing. The solution? Refrain from writing checks until you can deposit more funds.

If only the answer to dwindling resources was always so simple. When natural resources—such as habitats and the species they support—are over-exploited, destroyed, or lost, they may be gone forever. We can’t make a new “deposit.” The resulting loss of biodiversity could lead to unknown and potentially catastrophic consequences for plant and animal species, for our environment, and ultimately for us. But how can people become informed and motivated enough to keep them from “overdrawing” our natural resources?

Ke Chung Kim has made a career of finding answers to this question. The entomologist and director of Penn State’s Center for BioDiversity Research believes that the only way to convince a public whose attitudes may be shaped by apathy, skepticism, or self-interest is to link the importance of biodiversity conservation to people’s everyday lives.

“Surveys show that fewer than 50 percent of people have even heard the term ‘biodiversity,’” Kim says. “Of those, only about 30 percent really know what it is. Many people think biodiversity only relates to the rainforests and has nothing to do with them. To grab people’s attention and help them understand the importance of biodiversity conservation, we have to find ways to make it relevant by connecting it to their daily lives.”

So Kim set out to create an educational publication that was attractive and readable. The 20-page publication, Biodiversity: Our Living World–Your Life Depends on It, is a primer packed with information, factoids, and illustrations about the natural world and the species that inhabit it.

The publication defines biodiversity as “the variety and variation of all species of plants, animals, fungi, and microbes, including their genetic makeup, their ecological roles, and their interrelationships in biological communities throughout the world ecosystems.” To move beyond this abstract definition and drive home the point of why biodiversity matters to you and me, Kim came up with the concept of a “biodiversity account,” the number of species needed to produce an item for human consumption or to maintain ecological services that support humans. The reader learns how multitudes of species interact to make possible the food we eat, the clothes we wear, and the houses in which we live.

“For example, let’s look at a hamburger dinner with French fries and apple pie for dessert,” Kim explains. “Obviously, to have ground beef, you need a cow. The hamburger bun requires wheat flour and yeast, which is a fungus. For French fries, you need potatoes and corn or soybean oil to fry them. To make ketchup, mustard, pickles, and other hamburger fixings you need additional plants and plant-derived spices. The apple pie filling contains sugar and one or more varieties of apples and spices, and the crust contains wheat flour and vegetable shortening.

“You might have 15 or 20 species just on your plate,” he continues. “But the cow might eat stored grain and several of 17 species of pasture plants, including grasses, legumes, and weeds. To grow apples, potatoes, and tomatoes you need pollinators, such as honey bees. All plants grow in ecosystems that depend on many species—such as insects, spiders, earthworms, fungi, and bacteria—for energy and nutrient cycling. Add it all up and the biodiversity account for this one meal might be more than 400 species.”

Kim’s publication contains several such examples. The number of tree species needed to build the average house? At least 50, and that doesn’t count the hundreds of species of fungi, bacteria, animals, and plants that support and depend on the forest ecosystems where those trees grow.

What about that tuna fish you ate for lunch yesterday? It ate mostly mackerels and herrings, which in turn fed on dozens of species of smaller fish, crustaceans, squids, worms, and plankton. Thus, the biodiversity account of tuna includes easily 50 species of animals as food. “If pollution or other human activities harm these marine species, tuna populations can suffer,” says Kim.

“The bottom line,” he says, “is that biodiversity is the basis upon which ecological systems operate. One or two species lost may not seem significant, but when a particular species that’s crucial to maintaining the system disappears, the system could malfunction and eventually collapse. We don’t know at what level of loss this will happen, and figuring that out is a challenge for science in the future. But we can’t wait until then. We may already have lost species that we didn’t even know existed. We need to figure out what we have and save as much as we can.”

Kim is involved in several efforts to do just that. Besides founding the Center for BioDiversity Research, he leads the Pennsylvania Invertebrates Biodiversity Project, a survey designed to identify as many invertebrate species as possible in the state. He has conducted biodiversity assessments for the National Park Service and for the Indiantown Gap National Guard Training Center. He is curator of Penn State’s Frost Entomological Museum, which is a source of important reference collections for biodiversity research related to arthropods, and he chairs the DMZ Forum, a group that has worked to maintain the Demilitarized Zone in his native Korea as a biodiversity preserve.

Kim also has been instrumental in building an infrastructure for biodiversity conservation policy within and across state government departments. Several state agencies provided funding and support for Biodiversity: Our Living World–Your Life Depends on It, and the Department of Environmental Protection has used the publication widely in its educational outreaches, including with K-12 classes in school districts around the state and in connection with 2002 Earth Day festivities.

In Kim’s mind, such public education is the first priority in the campaign to save our valuable biodiversity. “Unless the public understands what’s at stake, none of our other efforts will go very far.”

____________________________

Ke Chung Kim is professor of entomology, curator of the Frost Entomological Museum, and director of the Center for BioDiversity Research. Funding for Biodiversity: Our Living World–Your Life Depends on It was provided by the Pennsylvania Wild Resources Conservation Fund, with support from the Pennsylvania Department of Conservation and Natural Resources, the Pennsylvania Game Commission, and the Pennsylvania Fish and Boat Commission. It is available online at pubs.cas.psu.edu/freepubs/uf017.html.

HIGHLIGHTS OF THE INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE “BIODIVERSITY: SCIENCE AND GOVERNANCE”:

The International Biodiversity Conference, organized by the French Ministry of Research, opened Monday at the headquarters of the UN Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) on the theme “Biodiversity: Science and Governance.” Participants heard opening statements in the morning, and convened in Plenary in the afternoon to consider challenges regarding biodiversity, science and governance.

OPENING SESSION

François d’Aubert, French Minister Delegate for Research, opened the Conference, and welcomed participants.

Noting the outcomes of the World Conference on Disaster Reduction, held prior to the Conference, Koïchiro Matsuura, UNESCO Director-General, highlighted the potential of healthy ecosystems in disaster reduction, and called for improved earth observation systems. He expressed hope that the UN Decade for Education for Sustainable Development will help connecting science and society. Advocating an ongoing dialogue between scientists and decision makers, he called for: additional research; involvement of the private sector and civil society, including local and indigenous communities; capacity building; and conflict prevention.

Klaus Toepfer, Executive Director of the UN Environment Programme (UNEP), stressed the impact of biodiversity loss on humankind, and said preserving healthy ecosystems is crucial for achieving the Millennium Development Goals and implementing sustainable strategies for land use, industry and tourism. He stressed the interlinkages between climate change, desertification and biodiversity loss, and called for investments in capacity building and in coherent, coordinated and policy-relevant science.

Hamdallah Zedan, Executive Secretary of the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD), noted that despite increased recognition of biodiversity’s value, knowledge about biodiversity loss is limited. He highlighted the challenge faced by the international community to achieve the 2010 target to significantly reduce the current rate of biodiversity loss, and called for stronger international cooperation and effective communication on biodiversity loss and its effects.

Mohammed Valli Moosa, President of the World Conservation Union – IUCN, stressed direct links between biodiversity loss and human activities, warning that more than 15,000 species are threatened with extinction according to the IUCN Red List. He suggested a framework to put biodiversity at the center stage of human activities on the basis of four key elements: people around the world; science; regulations and laws at all levels; and the market force.

Bertrand Collomb, Chairman of Lafarge and the World Business Council for Sustainable Development, said the business sector has recognized the importance of sustainability and nature conservation and that biodiversity-related projects can improve a company’s public image. He stressed the need for partnerships, determination and consistency of actions, as well as the role of governments in setting appropriate frameworks for action.

Noting that good politics should be based on good science, Stavros Dimas, European Commissioner for the Environment, said the EU will continue to work on integrating environmental concerns into its policies and support funding for environment programmes, and stressed the need for increased action to achieve the 2010 target, prioritization and mobilizing support as well as building scientific capacity and better communicating scientific issues regarding biodiversity.

Nicolas Hulot, President of the Nicolas Hulot Foundation, said the Conference should aim at ensuring coherence among policies and actions rather than raising awareness. He noted that there is no conflict between various interests involved in biodiversity, and stressed the need for cooperation, placing society at the heart of concerns and actions, and new forms of solidarity.

Matsuura, on behalf of UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan, stressed that biodiversity is essential to life, and called upon countries which have not already done so, to ratify the CBD. He said biodiversity conservation is not only the responsibility of governments, but also of non-governmental organizations, the private sector and all the Earth’s inhabitants.

Edward Wilson, Harvard University, said there is overwhelming scientific evidence of man’s adverse impact on biodiversity, much of which is still unknown to science. He reasoned that exploration and conservation are not only crucial, but also cost-effective and technically possible, and called for fact-based and ethical decision making. He stressed that poverty inhibits conservation, and cited that “man is defined not by what he creates, but by what he chooses not to destroy.”

Wangari Maathai, Assistant Minister for Environment and Natural Resources of Kenya, Nobel Peace Prize Laureate, reviewed lessons learned from two mountain ecosystems in Kenya with regard to biodiversity loss and its impacts on human societies, while emphasizing the success of rehabilitation through reforestation under governmental guidance. She said political will is the key in taking actions to conserve biodiversity.

Stating the importance of balancing economic development and conservation of natural resources, Abdullah Badawi, Prime Minister of Malaysia, highlighted crucial issues regarding biodiversity conservation, including: capacity building; a dialogue on biodiversity governance; negotiations of an access and benefit-sharing regime under the CBD; intellectual property rights; and implementation of the Cartagena Protocol on Biosafety.

Marc Ravalomanana, President of the Republic of Madagascar, highlighted the importance of the Conference’s topics to his country, noting its biodiversity wealth. He stressed the need to reconcile the needs of rapid economic growth with those of preserving outstanding biological wealth, arguing that sustainable development, the protection of nature and good governance are interlinked. He noted gaps between North and South regarding scientific expertise.

Jacques Chirac, President of the French Republic, stressed that the human fate is bound to that of other species, and proposed creating an intergovernmental panel to assess trends in biodiversity and developing a worldwide network of experts. He noted that France has incorporated an Environment Charter in its Constitution, highlighted France’s biodiversity-related policies, and proposed hosting in Paris a high-level seminar on intellectual property rights as they relate to biodiversity. He stressed the need for urgent measures to achieve the 2010 target.

PLENARY

The first plenary session, chaired by Peter Raven, Missouri Botanical Garden, addressed challenges faced by science and governance with regard to biodiversity. The session included a roundtable.

Chair Raven noted that more is known about the moon than about the Earth’s rainforests, and called for more research and decisive steps, actions and strategies based on individual responsibility.

Jacques Blondel, French National Centre for Scientific Research, stressed that preserving biodiversity today will guarantee its evolutionary potential, and that the loss of biodiversity is irreversible. Noting that the Earth is currently experiencing a period of mass extinction, he said the challenge lies in determining how the loss of species affects their ecosystems, and in predicting how ecosystem functions and services will be affected by future extinctions. Noting that some irreversible thresholds have already been passed, he expressed hope that these predictions will positively influence decision making. Blondel said conserving biodiversity is an ethical question, and called for an integration of natural and human sciences. Stressing that economic development can only be sustainable in a well-functioning ecosystem, and that development cannot be sustainable when it is not shared, he concluded that we need to radically revise our way of life.

Michel Loreau, Chair of the Scientific Committee of the Conference, spoke on challenges regarding biodiversity. Addressing the question “why does biodiversity matter?”, he explained that humankind depends on biodiversity as a source of goods for direct use, ecosystem services, as well as natural heritage, aesthetic, spiritual, cultural and recreational values. He said scientific challenges include assessing: how much biodiversity there is on Earth; how and why biodiversity is changing; the ecological consequences of changes in biodiversity; and how we can best manage and protect biodiversity. Loreau explained that challenges for governance include: recognizing the importance of biodiversity as a global environmental issue; educating and informing citizens; developing coordinated research and supporting funding agencies; using available knowledge to take immediate action; integrating biodiversity conservation and sustainable use in social and economic development; and establishing an intergovernmental mechanism to synthesize scientific knowledge. He said a draft “Paris Appeal of Scientists in Favour of Biodiversity” will be circulated and finalized during the Conference.

Speaking about globalization of the economy and current biodiversity changes, Claude Martin, Director-General of WWF International, quoted a WWF report using the living planet index and humanity’s ecological footprint over the past 40 years to show that globalization has tremendous impacts on biodiversity. He underscored that, to address this challenge, governments need to set up long-term goals integrating environmental concerns into the development process. Martin also highlighted the need for a fundamental change in thinking. Regarding genetically modified organisms (GMOs), he said while GMOs might increase food production, without internationally established standards, they often pose risks to biodiversity. He commended a statement on the need for returning benefits to local and indigenous communities where scientific research results are generated.

Cristian Samper, National Museum of Natural History, Smithsonian Institution, said our knowledge of biodiversity has greatly expanded, but biodiversity is still declining. He noted that while most of the world’s biodiversity is found in developing countries, developed countries benefit most from it and have the knowledge and capacity to prevent biodiversity’s decline. He noted the challenge in using scientific knowledge regarding biodiversity’s response to change to recover species from the brink of extinction and prevent further degradation of ecosystems. He called for synergies between biodiversity-related conventions, and advocated increased attention to: coherence between global and national policies; effective monitoring and indicators; implementation and compliance; and access and benefit sharing. He called for clear rules for access, traceability and transparency, but cautioned against policies that become a barrier to biodiversity research. Regarding an intergovernmental panel for biodiversity, Samper proposed other ways to strengthen scientific input into the decision-making process, including: building bridges within the scientific community; seeking interlinkages with other topics; building national and regional capacity; investing in basic and policy-relevant science; and strengthening existing mechanisms, such as the Millennium Ecosystem Assessment. Highlighting the amount of information gathered in natural history museums worldwide, he said museums’ responsibilities include: mobilizing information contained in collections and literature through mechanisms such as the Global Biodiversity Information Facility; generating new knowledge through research; developing education and outreach; and building capacity and collaboration for biodiversity with an emphasis on countries of origin.

Roundtable Chair Robert Watson, World Bank, invited panelists to focus on the greatest challenge to a sustainable use of biodiversity, whether biodiversity conservation can be reconciled with rapid economic growth, and reasons for discrepancies between civil society’s care about nature and destruction of it.

Jean-François Dehecq, President of Sanofi-Aventis, outlined steps and issues associated with discovering and exploiting natural compounds for developing drugs, noting that therapeutic progress may be undermined by the fact that patenting of biodiversity still remains unresolved at the international level.

Maathai said the greatest challenge is to convince decision makers and society that biodiversity is a priority, stressing that in spite of the fact that humans are better informed than 30 years ago, they continue destroying species with the prospect of their own destruction. She recalled that the consequences of current destruction will be experienced by future generations.

Russell Mittermeier, President of Conservation International, noted that France has the world’s largest number of hotspots. He said megadiverse countries and biodiversity hotspots should be priorities for action to achieve the 2010 target, and stressed the role of protected areas in conserving biodiversity.

Harison Randriarimanana, Minister of Agriculture, Livestock and Fisheries of Madagascar, stated that it is possible to reconcile biodiversity conservation with rapid economic growth and poverty alleviation in countries like Madagascar. However, he said this will not happen unless people living in poverty, decision makers and scientists are brought together for action.

Wilson stressed the role of education in bridging the gap between science, policy and the public for biodiversity conservation, and said lack of an ethical code and moral standards for human activities are one of the reasons why human actions tend to compromise nature.

World Food Day 2004 Highlights the Importance of Biodiversity to Global Food Security

WASHINGTON and ROME, Oct. 15 /PRNewswire/ -- Biological diversity is one
of the keys to ending world hunger, Dr. Jacques Diouf, Director-General of the
UN Food and Agriculture Organization said today.
He was speaking at a ceremony marking World Food Day 2004, which falls on
the anniversary of the foundation of FAO in 1945 and is observed in Rome and
in some 150 countries around the world. This year's World Food Day theme is:
"Biodiversity for Food Security."
"Our planet abounds with life and it is this great diversity that holds
one of the keys to ending hunger," Dr. Diouf told high-ranking officials and
representatives from FAO Member States, international organizations, other UN
agencies, NGOs, civil society and farmers' groups.
In his address, he underlined the need to maintain biodiversity in nature
and on farms to ensure to all people a sustainable access to enough
diversified and nutritious food.
"But we are also raising an alarm," he added. "FAO estimates that about
three-quarters of the genetic diversity of agricultural crops has been lost
over the last century. Just 12 crops and 14 animal species now provide most
of the world's food."

A key to survival
"For many rural families, the sustainable use of local biodiversity is
their key to survival. It allows them to exploit marginal lands and ensure a
minimum level of food production even when faced with extremely harsh
conditions," Dr. Diouf said.
"Global food security depends not just on protecting the world's genetic
resources, but also on ensuring that these resources remain available to all,"
he pointed out.
"Preserving the world's agricultural biodiversity needs to be viewed as a
joint effort involving farmers, commercial plant breeders and the scientific
community," the FAO Director-General also said.
In his keynote speech, World Food Day 2004 special guest President Ferenc
Madl of Hungary said: "The international community should spare no effort to
implement the Millennium Development Goals for the benefit of all."
Mr. Madl called on all countries to "create conditions to facilitate
access to genetic resources for environmentally sound uses."
He also said that his country, which was among the countries that welcomed
and ratified the FAO International Treaty on Plant Genetic Resources for Food
and Agriculture, is "a leading place in Central Europe to breed traditional
and new plant varieties."
The Treaty, which entered into force this year, is a binding international
instrument that secures the conservation and sustainable utilization of the
world's agricultural genetic diversity. It guarantees that farmers and
breeders have access to genetic materials they need and it also ensures that
farmers receive a fair and equitable share of the benefits derived from their
work.

Message from the Pope
A message on the importance of biodiversity from Pope John Paul II was
read by Monsignor Renato Volante, Permanent Observer of the Holy See to FAO.
The Pope stated that the World Food Day observances contribute to liberate
humanity from the scourge of hunger and malnutrition.
Statements were also delivered in succession, by Mr. Paolo Scarpa Bonazza
Buora, Italy's Undersecretary of State for Agricultural and Forestry Policies,
Mr. Edouard Saouma, former Director-General of FAO, and Mr. Mamadou Cissokho,
Honorary President of the Network of Peasant Organizations and Producers of
West Africa and of the National Council of Senegal for Dialogue and Rural
Cooperation.
Dr. Diouf awarded a special FAO Medal to his predecessor, Mr. Saouma, and
World Food Day 2004 Medals to the three first prize winners of the World Food
Day poster competition, organized by the United Nations Women's Guild.
During the same ceremony, Dr. Diouf introduced the newly appointed FAO
Goodwill Ambassador, Italian ballerina Carla Fracci, who is considered one of
the greatest classical dancers of the 20th century. Carla Fracci is now
Director of the Balletto dell'Opera of Rome.
FAO Goodwill Ambassadors are distinguished women and men of talent who,
through their work and in their daily lives, help to focus global attention on
the need to free the world from hunger and poverty.
A musical presentation followed. Internationally renowned Albanian
violonist Anyla Kraja performed "Schindler's list" by J. Williams, while
Angolan singer and dancer Tasha Rodrigues and her musical group performed two
songs from her last CD "Kyra Kyra."

Farmers' event
During World Food Day's observance at FAO headquarters, a farmers' event
also took place as well as a civil society forum. For the first time on World
Food Day, farmers from different parts of the world had a chance to speak
about their experience in enhancing biodiversity and increasing food
production in a sustainable way.
Elsewhere, various events were organized to celebrate World Food Day's
theme. In the United States, sponsored by the U.S. National Committee for
World Food Day, hundreds of WFD teleconference sites were set up at colleges
and at U.S. Embassies across the world. Some colleges organized a week-long
observance.
In Sweden, substantive seminars for parliamentarians, the media and the
scientific community were organized. A conference on the importance of
biodiversity took place in Stockholm and a scientific seminar on biological
diversity was organized today at the University of Agriculture, in Uppsala.
In India, essay competitions were organized in schools in Delhi. In
several European and Middle Eastern capitals, schoolchildren competed in
drawing contests on biodiversity and food security

Biodiversity of the coastal zone

An example of activities aimed at the conservation of biological diversity within the coastal zone is the 'Yuntolovsky' reserve in North West Russia. The reserve is located in the North West part of the city of St Petersburg, and borders the Finnish Bay in the south. The rivers of the Yuntolovka and Kamenka are in the West and East. For a number of years this coastal area was located within the limits of Saint-Petersburg and has been central in the conflict of interests between urban developers, industrial enterprises, yacht clubs and owners of cottage plots.

The Yuntolovsky is a continuation of the natural coastal belt in the East and plays an important role in conservation of coastal landscapes in the eastern part of the Finnish Bay and the water area of the Lakhtinsky Bay, which is the habitat of rare species of flora, birds and fish breeding grounds. The whole area of the Lakhtinsky Bay represents a unique natural phenomenon: spring marshes, black alder swamps, habitat of rare flora species, such as honeywort have been included in the Red Book.

History

In the early 20s scientists and experts paid attention to this unique territory and came up with an initiative to create a natural reserve. However, for a variety of reasons, it wasn't until the early 90s that the possibility for implementation of this idea presented itself.

During 1990-1991, a number of Resolutions issued by the Board of Leningrad Council of People's Deputies, led to the creation of Yuntolovsky reserve and the establishment of its temporary borders. The Resolutions also recommended that the Executive Committee undertake a number of specific actions aimed at encouraging the organization of the reserve, but this was never taken forward.

In 1996, the Directorate for Environment Protection within the Saint-Petersburg administration, and European Union Coastal Protection Division entered an agreement on development of the Management Plan with respect to the Yuntolovsky reserve. There was a considerable experience gained by European countries in the field of organisation and management of natural territories subject to a specific protection approach.

Managment plan
The preparation and implementation of the Management Plan represented a practical step towards sustainable important principles specified in various international documents on sustainable development that were adopted development of the city, as it took into account a range of very in Rio de Janeiro in 1992:
Conservation of biological diversity The territory of Yuntolovsky reserve being part of the Baltic flyway of migrating birds, their camping and feeding place, has gained significant importance at international level. Many flora and fauna species have now been entered into the Red Book of the Baltic Region and Russia:

conservation of wetlands;
conservation of water resources- restoration and conservation of the reserve, which is directly linked to the Finnish Bay, facilitates improving the ecological conditions of water area in the Baltic region;
resolution of social issues - the above mentioned territory is used for recreational purposes encouraging creation of employment opportunities;
development of ecological education of the population - The Management Plan stipulated the use of the territory for the purpose of scientific research by 2002 and was marked by the establishment of an informational ecological centre incorporating a nature museum available to students, school children and the adult population as part of an education programme.
The major objective of the Yungolovsky Reserve Management Plan is to achieve the set tasks and create optimal conditions for the natural territory and the city to co-exist together in the best way.

A number of parallel studies were also carried out in the new state of the territory. This later provided grounds for formulating proposals and finalizing a legal procedures for establishing borders of the reserve with the approval of the governor of Saint-Petersburg. An administration was set up to supervise the natural territories of the city, subject to a specific protection approach.

Yungolovsky Ecological Centre

In 1997, the residents of the Primorsky administrative district within Saint-Petersburg where the Yuntolovsky reserve is located, prepared and approved the District Agenda for the 21st century. The latter places particular focus on plans in respect to conservation of biological diversity in the district and development of the reserve. The residents of the district established their own public organization called the 'Yungolovsky Ecological Centre'. They were committed to resolve the issues of improving the territory of the reserve and adjacent areas, as well as promoting ecological awareness. The Centre is now open and conducting training courses on conservation issues including biological diversity. The Centre also arranges excursions on the territory of the reserve and organizes seminars and workshops on the problems associated with conservation of nature and development of ecological tourism.

Visitors to the centre take an active part in numerous activities aimed at improving the territory surrounding the reserve and restoring plant growth in its buffer zone that has been damaged as a result of intensive development in the district.

In 1999, an ornithological tower was placed on the border of the reserve providing free access to the public. Information stands were put up along the perimeter of the territory highlighting details such as the borders of the reserve, its biological value and code of behaviour that had to be observed. The ecological park offers nature walks, recreational facilities and informational materials.

GIS

In 2002, with the assistance of the Danish Agency for Environment Protection, a geographical information system was developed to provide a way of monitoring the preserve condition. This enables one to identify the most topical issues with respect to its development. Hence, as a result of monitoring activities undertaken over the last few years, some reduction in the productivity of the available feeding resources for the waterfowl has been observed on the territory of the Lakhtinsky Bay. This triggered the development of the restoration programme. The programme for restoration of shoal waters has been prepared for the northern part of the Lakhtinsky Bay. The latter was damaged as a result of hydrotechnical works, performed on the rivers flowing into the Bay. Apart from the involvement of the local industrial enterprises who are financing such works, their operation has been made a subject of stringent control. This comes from the point of view of nature-orientated bodies in the city, as a measure to try and protect this unique territory from possible adverse effects.

Biodiversity partnership

Defenders of Wildlife has long been a leader in the conservation of wolves and other endangered species. While Defenders takes great pride in that work, the organization's mission is to protect all native wildlife in its natural habitat and to secure biodiversity throughout the country, not only in places with large expanses of protected land and populations of large predators. As communities grow and their borders expand, Defenders' mission has led the organization to examine the land use planning process and its effect on wildlife outside of parks, preserves and refuges.

Biodiversity has been defined as "the variety of living organisms, the genetic differences among them, the communities and ecosystems in which they occur, and the ecological and evolutionary processes that keep them functioning, yet ever changing and adapting" (Noss and Cooperrider 1994). That diversity is essential to the biological processes that sustain life. The quality of the air we breathe, the water we drink, the soil we cultivate, the plants and animals we depend on for food and fiber, and the landscape we enjoy for recreation — the fundamentals of our civilization, economy, and health all depend on biodiversity.

Habitat loss is now the most significant threat to biodiversity. As many other reports and scientific papers have shown, the loss, degradation and alteration of habitat are the primary factors responsible for the worldwide decline in numbers of wild animals and plants. While many people think habitat destruction and loss of biodiversity are problems confined to exceptionally species-rich areas like the tropics, they are very real problems here in the United States. Uncontrolled growth, often referred to as "sprawl", plagues communities across the country. It permanently fragments contiguous habitat into marginal pieces of land. Habitat loss and diminishing biodiversity may be the most urgent environmental problems we now face.

In December 2000, to help draw attention to the importance of biodiversity, problems caused by habitat loss, and the potential role of land use planning in solving the current conservation crisis, the Doris Duke Charitable Foundation awarded a grant to Defenders of Wildlife, NatureServe, the Environmental Law Institute and Island Press. The Duke Foundation asked the four groups, together known as the Consortium on Biodiversity and Land Use, to examine the interaction of biodiversity, habitat protection and land use planning in a program of research, publishing, and public outreach.

To investigate the vital role conservation planning can play in connecting land use planning and biodiversity preservation, and as part of work funded by the Duke Foundation grant, Defenders of Wildlife sponsored a two-day workshop at the Wye River Conference Center in Queenstown, Maryland from February 28 to March 1, 2002. The workshop brought together over three dozen state and local land use planners, government officials, and representatives of conservation organizations from around the country, who are all involved in innovative efforts to integrate biodiversity and land use planning at the state, regional and/or local level. This report describes their discussions and the broad range of views expressed at the workshop.

One of the goals of the workshop and this report is to help promote comprehensive conservation planning by stimulating interest in ecosystem-based land use plans designed to facilitate environmental restoration, protect and conserve wildlife habitat and other natural resources. Workshop participants agreed that conservation planning presents an opportunity to make the United States' approach to conservation more proactive. Given the importance of preserving natural habitats and biodiversity, the information and insights gathered at the workshop will be relevant to communities throughout the country.

Biodiversity at Risk
The world is now in the midst of an extinction crisis. Many species have been driven to the brink of extinction or beyond, and we are in danger of losing much of the biodiversity that has made our quality of life possible. According to The Nature Conservancy and NatureServe, more than 6,700 animal and plant species in the United States are vulnerable to extinction (Stein et al. 2000). The federal Endangered Species Act currently lists only about 1,300 of those species as endangered or threatened. Losing these species could severely affect the diversity of life and the biological processes on which all living things, including humans, depend.

Populations of some species protected by the Endangered Species Act are rising, but many others are not. In 1996, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service reported to Congress that, despite protection under the Endangered Species Act and other laws, less than 40 percent of listed species are stable or improving. Nearly 30 percent of those listed in the early 1970s with the Act's inception continue to decline (U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service 1996).

Preventing extinction and preserving species' ecological roles requires protection of their natural habitats. The most significant threat to biodiversity now lies in the loss, degradation and fragmentation of the habitats animals and plants need to survive (Wilcove et al. 2000). According the Natural Resources Conservation Service's Natural Resources Inventory, an estimated 2.2 million acres of land are lost to development in the United States each year (Natural Resources Conservation Service 2000). The Department of the Interior reports that more than half the nation's wetlands have been filled since the American Revolution (Dahl 1990). In the Tucson area of Arizona alone, an estimated 6,400 acres of Sonoran Desert are now being converted to human use annually. A 1995 analysis by Defenders of Wildlife identified 69 ecosystems in the United States that had lost 85 percent or more of their acreage to development over the last three centuries (Noss and Peters 1995). Other studies indicate that only 42 percent of U.S. lands remain covered with natural vegetation (Bryer et al. 2000).

Parks and preserves help protect natural habitats, but they are scattered throughout the country with few natural landscape linkages between them. Most protected areas are also found at high elevations, or on biologically unproductive lands that tend to harbor fewer species than those at lower elevations (Scott et al. 2001). These low-elevation, biologically diverse areas are also attractive for development.

The Need for Conservation Planning
The federal Endangered Species Act is the most powerful regulatory tool for protecting individual species and natural habitats in the United States. The Endangered Species Act prohibits taking, killing or otherwise harming species that have been officially listed as endangered or threatened, and calls for protection of habitat critical to their survival. But the Endangered Species Act has been used to protect species only after their numbers have dropped to perilously low levels. Waiting until populations of the species reach the brink of extinction reduces their chances for successful recovery and such reactive, urgent rescue operations usually require intensive management and habitat restoration. This kind of last-minute regulatory action is also often extremely expensive and contentious.

Over the last decade, in an attempt to protect endangered species and their habitats on non-federal lands, habitat conservation plans have been adopted as a provision of the Endangered Species Act. Under 1982 amendments to the Endangered Species Act, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service can approve habitat conservation plans that allow the destruction or alteration of habitat for listed species in one area in exchange for conservation measures that protect those species and their habitat elsewhere. Habitat conservation plans represent a pragmatic advance in endangered species protection, but few plans are designed to preserve a full range of species over an extended area, let alone an entire region. Too many plans, especially the early ones, deal only with one or two endangered species, small parcels of land, and a limited number of landowners.

Recently, a number of habitat conservation plans that seek to protect many species and large areas of land have been undertaken at the state and regional level. In southern California, for example, multi-species conservation plans have been adopted for large portions of San Diego and Orange counties. Similar plans are underway in other California counties, as well as in Arizona and Nevada. While such multi-species plans represent progress in conservation, they are often not integrated well with local land use planning.

Experience suggests that a more comprehensive, refined, and proactive approach is needed to protect large areas that support whole communities of wildlife and other natural resources. Conservation should be initiated to prevent species from becoming endangered or threatened, rather than begun only when their numbers have declined to the point where emergency protection and recovery is required. Ultimately, preserving entire ecosystems cost less, give landowners, wildlife biologists, and land use managers greater flexibility, and reduce conflicts between conservation and economic interests.

Linking state or regional conservation planning with local land use planning is one way to achieve a more comprehensive approach to habitat and biodiversity preservation. Some states and communities have already begun to do so, but to secure the nation's biodiversity and to make habitat conservation work comprehensively across the landscape, more plans that integrate wildlife conservation and local land use planning are needed.

Conservation planning offers a powerful way to address the needs of wild animals and plants while incorporating the goals of biodiversity and habitat preservation into state, regional and/or local planning processes. With conservation planning, the needs of wild animals and plants, and the human community can be considered concurrently. Such planning can help identify where to locate new housing developments, transportation corridors, and business sites so that natural habitats, aquatic resources, open space, and wildlife will be protected and conserved. To be effective, comprehensive conservation plans should be designed on a landscape-scale as much as possible, and include active community involvement.

Promoting Comprehensive Conservation Planning
In a proactive effort to protect endangered species, a number of state agencies, local and regional governments, and conservation groups have initiated comprehensive conservation planning processes. Five states — Florida, Massachusetts, Maryland, New Jersey and Oregon — have undertaken large-scale conservation assessments. Seven other states have begun to draft assessments, and others have expressed interest in drafting plans in the near future (see status map on the next page).

Although these states' assessments differ in approach, scope and methodology, all recognize the connection between conservation and land use planning, and that these disciplines can be used in a complementary fashion to help preserve biodiversity and natural habitats. This is particularly true in urbanizing landscapes where land use planning tends to focus and is most influential.

The few existing statewide conservation assessments use habitat and species information compiled by various government and private groups. Among these sources of information are the individual state's natural heritage programs. Initiated by The Nature Conservancy more than 25 years ago, these programs catalogue inventories of each state's wild animals, plants and plant communities. The Nature Conservancy has also begun to develop ecoregional plans, using ecological boundaries defined by environmental conditions such as moisture and solar radiation, and characteristic assemblages of species and habitats (Groves et al. 2000) to define 80 ecoregions within the United States. Each plan will feature conservation sites containing native plant and animal communities representative of the ecoregion's biodiversity and provide habitat for the region's "at risk" species.

To assist state fish and wildlife agencies in developing and implementing statewide conservation plans Federal funds are available through the Department of Interior's State Wildlife Grants Program. As of 2001, this program was funded at $80 million per year. To be eligible for these grants, a state fish and wildlife agency must agree to complete a comprehensive wildlife conservation plan by October 2005, and have the federal funds matched by nonfederal funds at a level of twenty-five percent for planning activities, and fifty percent for plan implementation. The State Wildlife Grants program, along with the information compiled by The Nature Conservancy and others, puts state and local land use planners in a good position to undertake comprehensive conservation planning.

However many state and local planners remain unaware of conservation plans or how to integrate them with local land use planning. Consequently, existing conservation strategies, local land use plans and related decision-making processes are not often connected effectively. Historically, local planning has not addressed habitat conservation systematically, and conservation groups and wildlife agencies have not always used land use planning processes effectively for habitat protection, hence opportunities to protect biodiversity and conserve habitat have often been missed. Even so called "smart growth" plans have often failed to include specifically designated wildlife habitats

Russian Biodiversity

Although not as rich in numbers of different plant species as the tropical forests, Russian taiga forests are home to upwards of 3000 known vascular plant species. In particular, the Ussuri taiga region containing the Sikhote-Alin mountain range in the Russian Far East has been designated as an IUCN Center for Plant Biodiversity. On Sakhalin Island in the Pacific, the shear number of plant species found in the temperate forests surpasses any other known biodiversity hotspot within the same ecological system. Due to its location, the southern portions of the Russian Far East escaped the massive ice sheets of the last glaciations, providing a refuge for species immigrating from northern territories.


Amur Tiger found in the Russian Far East (P. Schlesinger)
This unique bio-geologic history has created an unusual assemblage of flora and fauna, including Amur Tigers, Amur Leopards, musk deer, and Himalayan bears, with brown bears, reindeer and salmon (World Bank, Russia: Forest Policy During Transition, 1997). In addition, the Kamchatka Peninsula is home to the world’s largest spawning grounds for Pacific Salmon, supported by a dwindling conifer forest. The worlds largest population of brown bears lives along these rivers. Often compared the Yellowstone National Park in the United States, Kamchatka houses a fragile set of ecosystems threatened by resource extraction. Specifically, large-scale mining and gas and oil exploration has increased throughout this entire region over the past 5 years. In addition to mineral and oil reserves, Kamchatka is set directly along the Pacific ring of fire and home to over 300 volcano's of which 29 are known to be active.


Locations of High Biodiversity in Russia

Further west towards the heart of Siberia, Lake Baikal holds 20% of the world's fresh water resources. As the deepest fresh water body on the planet, over 23,000 km3 of water escapes through a single river: the Angara. The flora and fauna of the surrounding ecosystems contrasts starkly with the fact that Lake Baikal is home to more than 1500 species, 80% of which are endemic to that particular environment. The province of Buryatia struggles to protect these natural systems from the on-going construction of oil and gas pipelines heading east and south towards China.


Manchurian Walnut Tree in the Russian Far East (T. Stone )
Moving away from Siberia towards the more densely populated regions of European Russia, the Ural Mountains provide a natural barrier to eastward settlement expansion. Along the northern stretches of this range lies the largest unfragmented old growth forests left in Russia. Designated the Komi Virgin Forests by UNESCO World Heritage Committee, 3.3 million hectares of spruce, pine, larch, and fir forests lies protected from major advancements in extractive logging, gold mining, oil exploration and poaching. These northern taiga and sub-tundra ecosystems cover the largest swath of terrestrial earth, encompassing most of northern Eurasia. Within Komi lives a struggling indigenous population surviving off of some of the largest reindeer herds found on the continent. In addition, mushroom picking and berry gathering supplements the local economy.

Finally, the region west of the Ural Mountains, European Russia, is home to the vast majority of Russians. More developed, and rich in culture, Russia struggles to protect some of the last intact ecosystems scattered throughout this region. This is a very brief overview of the major biological hot-spots scattered throughout this massive country. With such a distinct representation of biological diversity, it is the responsibility of Russia with the international community to maintain these ecosystems as gems of our evolutionary

Value of Biodiversity

Why is biological diversity important? Many arguments can be made from scientific, philosophical, economic, ethical, and aesthetic perspectives. Scientists argue that much remains to be learned about many species and ecosystems around the world and that the loss of these species would foreclose that opportunity. Certain rare species are singled out as worth saving for their sake; the loss of the Sumatran tiger, for example, or the rhinocerous would be mourned by many who have never seen these animals in the wild. There is great beauty in forests, coral reefs, savannahs, and other landscapes that is worth preserving for future generations, as well as our own, to appreciate.

Natural resources also provide critical ecosystem services. Forests retain moisture in the soil and prevent erosion; hillside areas can be subject to mudslides where forests are cleared, resulting in loss of life and property. Of the approximately 1.4 million species that are known, almost one million are insects and other invertebrates, and these are, as E.O. Wilson has said, “the little things that run the world” by breaking down plant and animal matter and making it available as nutrients. Crop and forest lands provide food and wood for shelter and sustenance. The interactions between the living and the non-living parts of the environment provide essential ecosystems services of soil formation, climate control, and water recycling. In one study, published in 1997 in the science journal Nature, researchers estimated the value of these ecosystem services at between $16 trillion and $54 trillion a year.

Arguments for increased international efforts to conserve habitats and ecosystems often emphasize the value of biodiversity to humans: the "un-mined riches" that we may discover in plants and animals and the potential of new food sources. For example, approximately 25 percent of all prescription drugs in the United States are derived from plants. The rosy periwinkle from Madagascar is the source of a drug used in the treatment of Hodgkin's disease and leukemia. The Pacific yew tree is the source of Taxol, a drug which has been found effective in treatment of ovarian cancer. Some drugs found have been identified through native folklore. Peruvian Indians, for example, treated malaria with an extract from the bark of the Cinchona tree. Study of this extract led to discovery and use of quinine. the first effective treatment for malaria.

The potential for discovering medicines is often cited as an argument for international cooperation in preserving tropical forests, but also as a means for doing so, by finding useful products that can be extracted profitably from the plants and animals of the rainforest, through bioprospecting. For example, Glaxo Wellcome, a British pharmaceutical company, funds the Centre for Natural Products Research in Singapore, which surveys species in Asia for medicinal purposes. Conservation International has initiated an agreement between Bristol-Meyers Squib, Suriname, and the National Institutes of Health.

There are concerns about bioprospecting, however. Some developing countries maintain that they will not receive a sufficient portion of the profits from drugs developed from plants found within their borders. On the other hand, the costs of isolating useful species, developing drugs and other products, and testing them for use is enormously expensive, and those costs are borne by the drug companies.

What Lies Ahead?

The population of the Earth will likely double by the year 2050, resulting in a world of at least 10 billion people, the largest number of whom, by far, will live in tropical and subtropical Asia, Africa, and South America. These are as well the regions in greatest need of economic development, and the twin pressures of population growth and economic expansion can only increase the demands on biological resources. We can anticipate an ever-increasing competition among different uses of the available land, and the maintenance of biodiversity may not rank high in the face of other, more obvious demands.

Many of the existing policies of our own country that have been enacted to preserve biodiversity have been focused on threatened species, or to preserve striking or unique ecosystems, such as Yellowstone National Park. The Endangered Species Act, the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species, and our system of National Parks will continue to help in preserving biodiversity. But there are other areas of public policy that are as useful and important. In fact, it may well be that lands and waters that are necessarily exploited for their natural resources will hold the key for practical strategies to maintain biodiversity, for parks and preserves, alone, are inadequate for the task.

In truth, much that happens to preserve or decrease biodiversity arises through secondary effects of policies that are enacted for other reasons. Fisheries policies that aim to maintain fishery harvests; forestry policies that seek to maximize the economic yield of marketable timber; agricultural policies that maintain subsidies for keeping land in production that might be used for other beneficial purposes; and policies for the management of public lands that encourage overgrazing by maintaining artificially low grazing fees all have important negative effects on biodiversity, although not by design.

Other existing policies have impacts that work in the other direction. But unless the impacts on biodiversity of private acts or public policies are understood, and until there exists a broader consensus regarding the relative value of biodiversity, there is little hope, in this or any country, of holding the line at the levels that are needed for almost any use or service. We all need to be more aware of the direct benefits, indirect benefits, services, and future potential that biodiversity offers for both private gain and public benefit. We need greater awareness and coordination of policies that affect biodiversity, and national goals that go deeper than the protection of endangered species and the preservation of public parks.

From an economic perspective, much more work needs to be done to put a fair and meaningful valuation on biodiversity. The service aspects of biodiversity must be understood, and market mechanisms put in place to include these very real factors in both policy and business decisions.

From a scientific perspective, we need to learn more, and more quickly, about the role that biodiversity plays in the working of ecosystems. Gaps in our present knowledge of these connections now limit our assessments of the risks imposed when biodiversity declines, and preclude more complete economic evaluations.

In all of this, calls will be heard to defer action until we have in hand a more complete and reliable inventory of the present extent and variety of life on Earth, in terms of the number of species of plants and animals. Although counting must go on, it is now clear that waiting to learn the full extent of biodiversity before acting to stem so precipitous a decline is not a prudent choice, for both ecological and economic reasons.

Last, but certainly not least, are the issues of stewardship and ethics. In the long run, we must be concerned about maintaining the capability of the biological world to adapt, through adjustment and evolution, to changes in the physical environment. In addition, many would agree that as a society we bear the ethical obligation to protect the habitability of the planet, and to act as responsible stewards of its biological riches for the present and future welfare of the human species. To do that requires an appreciation of the value of biodiversity--both what it provides for the natural world and the ways that we can use it--and a commitment to preserve it so that our children and their children will continue to realize the benefits of a biologically rich Earth. Surely such a challenge demands the attention of scholars and policy-makers alike.

The Economic Value of Ecosystem Services

The economic value of ecosystem services is difficult to calculate, and this raises several important problems when we look at biodiversity in the context of public policy. How can we measure the economic value of ecosystem services such as water purification, or resistance to environmental disturbances? Since the maintenance of biodiversity involves choices and ultimately, costs, how can markets reflect and distribute these values appropriately?

The task may be somewhat easier in the case of new products and materials that are derived from the natural world. Prospecting for new pharmaceuticals is the most publicized, but not the only example. New food crops are also a possibility, although to date there have been very few such introductions that have achieved more than regional importance, either dietarily or economically. More intriguing, perhaps, is the use of genetic engineering to extract biochemical processes from the natural world. Research of this kind has found application in biological clean-up, or bioremediation of toxic waste and oil spills. An even more promising and somewhat more controversial opportunity is found in harnessing processes at the most fundamental levels of biological structure.

The pool of resources hidden in the genetic resources of living things is potentially huge. An example is the polymerase chain reaction (PCR) that is used in genetic research and in commercial applications to manipulate DNA. The ready availability of substances that speed up the rate at which the cells replicate--the catalysts that in living matter are proteins known as enzymes--has literally made genetic engineering practical on industrial scales.

The enzymes used to catalyze PCR were first isolated from bacteria that can survive only in high temperatures, and the source from which they were taken was natural hot springs in Yellowstone National Park. In this case, to say that an entire new industry depended on the diversity of organisms and habitats in the National Park system is no exaggeration. Substantial prospecting is now underway in these and other extreme environments to find enzymes that will catalyze other, industrially-useful reactions

The Services that Biodiversity Provides

Assessments of the economic benefits of biological diversity have been based primarily on our ability to generate revenue from biodiversity, through activities that produce measurable results in current markets, such as pharmaceuticals or tourism. But there are additional benefits from biodiversity that are not so easily included in commercial market analyses, and that come under the name of ecosystem services. These are the end results of natural biological processes that either improve the overall quality of the environment, or provide some benefit to the human users of the landscape--such as improvement of water quality and reduction of flooding. The concept of ecosystem services is unabashedly tilted toward human uses.

The study of ecosystem services is relatively new, but what is known points consistently in one direction: maintaining diversity on a variety of levels of ecological and biological organization--within forests, or among the trees that are there, or even within the genes of a single variety---is critical if services are to be maintained on a sustainable basis.

Ecosystem services can be provided in a variety of forms. One example is the purification of water that generally occurs by flowing through forested ecosystems and wetlands, which is an extremely important function from the standpoint of human populations that live downstream. The presence of living vegetation provides an efficient sink for many atmospheric pollutants as well. The regulation of stream flow by vegetation in the upper reaches of watersheds has long been recognized as an important ecosystem service, and watershed managers manipulate both the amount and type of vegetation in watersheds to help control sedimentation, floods, and sometimes stream flow.

The services that ecosystems provide often depend on the underlying physical structure of the habitat, such as the conditions for feeding and breeding that may be needed for the continued survival of an important animal species. What is often required is a diversity of habitats over an entire landscape. Ecosystem services may also depend on the presence of a particular species, as is the case in highly co-evolved plant-pollinator systems, or in highly managed agroecosystems that rely on specific pollinators, such as honeybees.

Biodiversity also plays an important role in maintaining ecosystem services over long periods of time, through the ups and downs of natural variations. Ecosystems that have lost either genetic or species diversity are less resistant to the effects of environmental perturbations, such as droughts, and are slower to recover when disturbed. Diversity is a form of ecosystem health insurance: those ecosystems that include several species that serve the same or similar functions tend to be more resistant to environmental stress and recover faster from perturbations.

The Loss of Species

Species extinctions have received the lion's share of the attention in debates regarding biodiversity and the need to sustain it. The loss of individual species in ecosystems, such as frogs in wetlands or ferns in a forest, can certainly affect the ways in which those systems work together to cycle essential nutrients and water and process energy. Since we have only limited ability to predict how ecosystems will respond in terms of replacement or built-in redundancy to the possible loss of a specific species, there is some reason to be concerned when any are threatened by extinction.

At the same time, the same degree of concern should apply to reductions in the populations of species, even if they are not reduced to disappearance altogether. The role that classes of organisms play in ecosystems depends not only on what they do in terms of material cycling and energy flow, but on how many are there to do it. Reductions in abundance of an essential species can clearly affect overall system functioning, and therefore the degree to which ecosystem services will continue to be provided.

Some, known as keystone species, play a role in ecosystems that seems out of proportion to their number, such that even small changes in their abundance may have great impacts on the ecosystems in which they live. A common example is the sea- otter, a marine mammal that lives along the coasts of the northern Pacific Ocean. They dive and prey on sea-urchins that principally feed, in turn, on large seaweed called kelp. When sea-otters are present, the number of urchins is kept sufficiently low that stands of kelp--which are of commercial value as a source of potash and iodine--can become established and thrive. When otters vanish from the scene, the resulting growth in urchin populations effectively prevents the plant's successful regeneration, and eventually leads to the loss of kelp forests.

In time, all classes of living things--like the dinosaurs, or, we must presume, our own species--must face extinction. But the disappearance of any of them is a critical endpoint, marking the end of 3.5 billion years of evolutionary development. In Nature it represents a permanent depletion of biodiversity and a loss of genetic information on which evolution is based. In terms of people and nations, it counts as a loss of potential economic value in terms of services or products. Each species is a reservoir of unique genetic information that cannot be reproduced once it is gone. In this broader sense, any extinction, however trivial it may seem, represents a permanent loss to the biosphere as a whole.

What we need to know for informed policy decisions are the ecosystem services that a threatened species provides; the degree to which it offers opportunities for direct economic benefit; how expected benefits weigh against costs of preservation; and on a more general level, how present or expected rates of extinction compare to what might be expected through natural changes. The telling questions are whether and by how much the present rate of species loss differs from the rate that Nature would exact, were we not here, and whether the species that are lost play important keystone roles. The challenge is that this sort of information is only rarely available. Nor do we have, as yet, a predictive theory of keystone species.

Rates of loss
The UNEP Global Biodiversity Assessment has recently reviewed the methods that have been used in the literature to calculate natural, or background extinction rates and have compared them against current trends. The results, which are intentionally conservative, are sobering. Best estimates are that current extinction rates for well- documented groups of primarily, but not exclusively, vertebrates and vascular (in general, seed-bearing and fern-like) plants are at least 50 to 100 times larger than the expected natural background. There is no good reason to expect these rates to differ very much for plant or animal groups that are less well-studied.

On the basis of recent estimates of land-use change, largely in the tropics, there is a reasonable expectation that extinction rates in the very near future could rise, worldwide, to as much as 10,000 times the natural level. Extinctions of this number and extent would approach, and possibly surpass, the major mass extinctions of the geologic past, as when dinosaurs and other life forms disappeared, about 65 million years ago.

The total number of species that inhabit the planet is unknown. The UNEP Global Biodiversity Assessment uses an estimate of about 13 million, but the range varies from 8 to 50 million or more. Only about 2 million species have been described scientifically, and they are distributed very unevenly among different taxonomic groups (Table 2). While important in its own right, the number need not be precisely known to be concerned about the rates at which the better documented species are now disappearing. In today's world, most extinctions will occur before the species have even been named and described, much less known ecologically.

Over Exploitation

Many of the best documented cases of individual species being driven to extinction or near-extinction by humans are those of over- exploitation.

The passenger pigeon--a species that resembled the smaller, mourning dove--was in the early 1800s the most abundant bird in North America, and so plentiful that migrating flocks of a billion or more individuals would darken the skies of parts of the eastern U.S. for days at a time. By the end of the last century it had been hunted to the brink of extinction, and in September of 1914, in a Cincinnati zoo, the passenger pigeon disappeared forever with the death of the last remaining bird. The American bison, or buffalo, of the Great Plains was also nearly hunted out of existence in the same century, and its larger, woods-dwelling relative was driven to extinction.

As many as a quarter of all the bird species in the world may have similarly vanished in the course of the last 1000 years with the expansion of human populations through the islands of the South Pacific. The spread of early people through the New World, about 10,000 years ago, was probably responsible for the extinction of many of the large mammals that were originally here: now-extinct mammoths, sloths, and cave bears are known to have been hunted by those who first walked through North and South America. The same impact was felt by large mammals in Australia, New Zealand, and Madagascar. The current and rapid loss of tropical hardwoods in many regions due to high commercial demand, low rates of successful replacement, and the long periods of growth necessary to produce new, marketable resources has raised concern about over- exploitation of some species, such as rosewood, although none of the trees are known to have been driven to extinction.

Over-exploitation is also a major factor in reducing the natural biodiversity of marine fisheries through major reductions in populations, although again, no extinctions have been documented. During the last two decades, the world has seen the collapse of a number of marine fisheries. Some of these have recovered, but others, such as the cod and haddock fisheries in the North Atlantic, have not. Even for those that recover, the consequences of the original over-exploitation on population dynamics and genetic diversity are now only poorly understood. What is often apparent is a systematic decrease in the size, and hence age, of the individuals that are harvested. The selective loss of larger fish has significant impacts on those that remain. If fertility is strongly related to body size, as is the case for many fish species, over-exploitation not only reduces the abundance of a species, but it may also make recovery more difficult in systematically removing the most fecund individuals. The ensuing consequences for overall ecosystem functioning and biodiversity are as yet not well understood.

Whole ecosystems can also be affected by over-exploitation. For example, a reduction in organic carbon and nutrients, including phosphorus or nitrogen, as may occur in intensively farmed areas, decreases the fertility of soils. When losses are severe, the resulting depletion can lead to either more intensified use by adding more fertilizers and then herbicides and pesticides to control weeds and pests (in the cycle noted above), or to abandonment. If abandoned, the land will probably not recover its original component of plant and animal species because of the depleted nutrients. Through this chain of happenings, an over-exploitation of the soil for agricultural gain can have long term, negative impacts on the biodiversity of the region.

Alien introductions
Introductions and invasions of alien species of plants and animals is a long-recognized problem, as detailed in an earlier issue of CONSEQUENCES. We have only limited ability to predict quantitatively the results of any particular intruder, including its capability of establishing a permanent, reproducing population. What is certain is that some areas are by nature more susceptible. Continental forests are reasonably resistant to newly introduced tree species, except in cases where they have been disturbed by heavy cutting or partial clearing. Native meadows and prairies, when disturbed, have also proven particularly susceptible to intruders, as is the case for the many grasslands around the world that have been converted to pasture or cultivated land. For example, many of the now common grasses in the intermontane western U.S. and southwestern Canada are transported Eurasian weeds. These species were able to invade and become established because the original perennial tussock grasses were unable to support the intensification of grazing from large-scale cattle ranching.

Freshwater lakes and streams have little immunity to invading species. Alien plants or animals seem able to establish reproducing populations relatively easily, and the new species often have significant impacts on biotic composition, and on a variety of ecosystem processes. Two examples of the kind of changes that can result from even well-meant introductions are the purposeful introduction of game fish to many lakes and streams throughout the world that replaced native varieties, and the ecological havoc that followed the introduction of the Nile perch in Lake Victoria in 1960 to benefit commercial fishing. In less than thirty years, the appetite of the Nile perch, whose food is smaller fish, led to the extinction of about thirty species of fish that were native to the lake.

In terrestrial ecosystems, the largest changes occur when the intruder brings quite different traits from those of native species. The best documented example is that of the introduction of the exotic tree, Myrica faga, into Hawaii, which has resulted in large changes in ecosystem dynamics. The significant difference, in this case, was the ability of the introduced tree--a legume like peas and beans and clover--to convert atmospheric nitrogen to ammonia, a characteristic not previously present in those ecosystems. This ability of the introduced tree increases the nitrogen content of soils, and thus alters the raw materials on which many other plant species depend.

Introduced species with characteristics that are not qualitatively different from those of native species, can through force of numbers have large and long-lasting effects on them. About 100 European starlings were released in New York City in 1890-91 by a collector bent on establishing all the birds mentioned in the writings of William Shakespeare. The result, evident throughout the country today, is a diminished number of many native American songbirds, through competition for nest-sites, in which the aggressive and now very abundant starling has been extremely successful

Land Use

Changes in how the land is used are probably the principal contributor to the current decline in biodiversity. About 1 to 2 percent of the land surface of the Earth is now devoted to urban use, but other changes in land cover and land use far exceed the direct impact of the small fraction that is paved or developed for homes and factories and other buildings. Homo sapiens has already converted about a quarter of all the land surface to agricultural uses. By some estimates we now appropriate directly or indirectly about 40 percent of what biologists call the primary production of the Earth's biota (the products of photosynthesis on which all other life depends), and the percentage that comes under our control in this way is increasing.

The pressures on terrestrial resources and land depend very much on population growth and the demands of early stages of economic development. Moreover, land acquisition, especially for agriculture and forestry, focuses initially on those areas with the most fertile soils and equable climates, which are often the areas of greatest biological diversity.

Deforestation in the humid tropics is probably the best-known current example of rapid land-use change. During the decade of the 1970s, vast areas of tropical forest in South America, Africa, and Southeast Asia were cleared and converted to agriculture and other uses. In the middle-to-late 1980s, the rates of deforestation in South America slowed dramatically, largely due to economic and tax policy changes in Brazil, but the pace of cutting in Africa and Southeast Asia, though poorly quantified, remains high. Globally, the rate of loss of tropical forests for the 1980s has been estimated at about 1 percent per year, but there is still considerable uncertainty. The rates of extinction of local species that accompany these rapid changes in land cover may soon be far in excess of what is found today, reaching as high as 10,000 times the natural background rate.

In the industrialized nations of the Northern Hemisphere the most rapid and widespread conversion of forest to other uses took place over the last several hundred years. In this time, much of the northeastern U.S., for example, was deforested at least once, in connection with the rise of agriculture and timber industries. But as regional and national economies changed, many previously cleared areas were left to return to their natural vegetation. As a result, forests have reappeared in parts of the Northeast, and indeed the country as a whole has probably gained forested land over the last several decades.

The current trend of most concern with respect to tree-cover in the U.S. is a shift to smaller parcel sizes. What once were continuously forested landscapes are now a quilt of small patches of trees, criss- crossed with roads, subdivisions, agricultural tracts, and a variety of different land-uses and land-covers: a scene that is familiar to anyone who has looked out an airplane window. The average size of tree-covered parcels is smaller than was the case twenty, fifty, or a hundred years ago, resulting in a landscape that is highly fragmented and partitioned.

The difference in terms of the natural world is great, and several studies now point with concern to the biological impacts of the shift to less continuous landscapes. The known consequences of these changes are reduced numbers of both plants and animals and a greater possibility of the outright loss of some of them--when in effect, they are painted into a corner with nowhere left for them to go. The interweaving of favorable and unfavorable habitats also curtails the ability of organisms to disperse, and makes recolonization of distant areas more difficult.

An analogous pattern of fragmentation can be found in parts of South America where deforestation was previously extremely rapid. Although the amount of new cutting appears to have fallen from that of previous decades, it seems to be increasing again in the rain forest of the Amazon, and the deforested, newly colonized regions now have their own distinctive appearance. Patchworks of active fields, orchards, abandoned fields, second growth forest, and primary forest are the norm. But the scene is ever changing through an interplay of active use by initial colonizers, abandonment, partial recovery through natural processes, and as then often happens, subsequent re-use. Analyses of potential impacts on biodiversity that are based on simple measures of deforested area can provide little more than very general conclusions.

Deforestation is not the only land-use change of interest or concern. Another with broad implications for biodiversity is the intensification of agriculture and grazing on those lands that have been traditionally devoted to these purposes. Of particular importance for biodiversity are the secondary impacts of intensive agriculture. Heavy applications of fertilizers and pesticides have the potential of creating additional environmental problems as well as affecting the abundance and viability of the other plants and animals and micro-organisms in the same or adjoining areas.

The adverse effects of non-point-source pollution due to the run-off of pesticides and herbicides from intensively-used fields are well- known. In addition, because of the understandable tendency to put the best land into production first, the expansion of agriculture into less fertile areas typically requires heavier applications of chemicals, more extensive site preparation, and other forms of more intensive management. The typical result is increased chemical run-off to the landscape, and with ensuing degradation, additional pressure for expansion, and so on. It is such a cycle that has led to widespread desertification in some parts of the world, primarily through overgrazing that can be compounded by naturally occurring droughts.