Source: The Palm Beach Post
Human activities have profoundly affected
the natural atmosphere of the United States, and their
impact is accelerating, a new assessment of the nation's
biological resources has found.
The carefully documented report, published by the U.S. Geological Survey with contributions from nearly 200 experts in and out of government, is perhaps the most ambitious effort yet to catalog the status of the nation's animals and plants.
The findings are familiar in many respects - the loss of ancient forest habitats because of logging, the draining of wetlands for development, overfishing of marine species, destruction of tall- grass prairies for farming.
But authors of the new report say it should serve as a comprehensive reference for future monitoring and assessment of species. Their aim, they say, was to create a benchmark for tracking what is being lost, what is being restored and where information is lacking. The report also is written in non-technical language to make it more accessible to legislators and policymakers.
Charles Groat, director of the Geological Survey, said researchers - and the public - have tended to pay more attention to such well- known species as "bears, whooping cranes and rainbow trout." Much less is known, he said, about the fate of mollusks, amphibians, mussels and aquatic plants.
The new report, "Status and Trends of the Nation's Biological Resources," attempts to redress that imbalance as much as possible. Groat said scientists can use the available data on lesser-studied species to help predict what might happen when an ecosystem undergoes stress.
But there remain many gaps in the data, he said, and more systematic collection of information about a variety of species in each region is crucial.
"There is a lot of hard, diligent, long-term scientific effort required to gather this information," Groat said.
Such diligent species-monitoring does not have universal support, according to Peter Raven, director of the Missouri Botanical Garden in St. Louis. In an introduction to the new 964-page report, Raven said some critics have "misguided perceptions" that too much monitoring of species can lead government agencies to overregulate land use and other activities.
Raven argues that such concerns are misplaced. He writes that "status surveys and monitoring have often allayed rather than heightened fears about wild animals and plants, particularly imperiled populations."
Moreover, he says, regulators tend to take a tighter, more conservative approach regarding protection if they do not have enough information on the status of a species. Close monitoring, he says, can show that a species has a wider range and greater population than first suspected.
Publication date: Oct 03, 1999
