Ecosystem

Clearcut

Fragment, advanced stage.
Fragmented ecosystems are still green and that's good enough for most humans. Why? Because they don't care about habitat.

Protected area.
Protected area is a term used to designate areas before logging, mining, drilling or development for nature enthusiasts and eco-tourists. First humans designate it. And then it fragments.

Whitehouse photo.

Park

Think globally, act locally. How does this popular platitude affect local biodiversity? First humans paint biodiversity into a corner of smaller and smaller dimensions. A degree of guilt sets in. The small corner is labeled a park. Humans feel warm fuzzies. Subsequently the quasi-ecosystems fragment. Habitat deteriorates. Subpopulations of organisms shrink. Ecologists determine which species can be propped up and use those species as causes celebres. Organisms are moved around in the park to suit the whims and fancies of the humans. Popular and native organisms are good. Non-native organisms are bad. Sometimes humans change their preferences. Success is declared with creative hype and hyperbole. Humans feel warm fuzzies. Political administrations change priorities, wars erupt, diseases hit , storms come, drought dries the small corners, and fires happen. The vulnerable subpopulations of organisms trapped in parks don't appreciate humans feeling warm fuzzies. Maybe we could get Dr. Dolittle to talk to the animals on our behalf. Spin doctors make humans feel warm and fuzzy about the relentless human juggernaut. Why not feed that baloney to the animals?

Anthropocentrism
Humans are relentlessly anthropocentric. They don't care about habitat or biodiversity. They do care about popular, preposterous, pretentious, perfunctory, pompous, politically correct, platitudinous pollyanna. Any way you cut it, slash it, or burn it, biodiversity was the biggest ecological loser of each of the last two centuries. Biodiversity will be an even bigger loser in the 21st century. We are at the top of the ninth. The score is BIODIVERSITY-2, ANTHROPOCENTRISTS-47. Some are willing to nibble at the syptoms, almost none are willing to acknowledge the cause.

Evil
Our unabashed dictionary defines biodiversity destruction and species extinction as evil.

Rain forest deforestation.

"The clearing of the forest is driven by hunger and by debt. The peasants are hungry and the politicians are in debt. Southeast Asian nations have already sold much of their forests to the Japanese and the Japanese are now negotiating for timber rights in the Amazon. The loss of each forest only makes each tropical country poorer, but government policies often encourage the losses."

"Scientists who are looking closely at global deforestation believe the rain forests are being cut down at present at a rate of about 20 million hectares, or 50 million acres, per year, twice what the U.N. reported: nearly one acre per second. But whether fifty acres or ten acres are vanishing per minute, Lovejoy says, the rain forests are going fast: 'You're only arguing about when it's going to be all over.'"

"There are two big blocks of rain forest still standing. One is in the heart of the Congo Basin, in Zaire. The other is Amazonia. The Amazon alone is almost the size of the continental United States. But satellite images from NASA's Landsats, beamed down to a local receiving station in San Jose dos Campos, show that some regions are being cleared at an exponentially increasing rate. At current rates the Amazonian forests will be gone within the next fifty years. Even if the rate of clearing is slowed, what is now a giant emerald block of forest is likely to be shattered into many thousands of green fragments."

"There is a space race down here on the ground. In this race every human being is a superpower and the competition no longer stands a chance."

The Next One Hundred Years, Jonathan Weiner.