Word: ecosystems
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1980-1989
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
Last month, however, Lilly suddenly announced that it would not sell Spike to Peru or the U.S. Government. Reason: the herbicide had not been fully tested in Peru. The company was undoubtedly reacting to protests by environmentalists, who claim that use of the herbicide on the Andes' delicate ecosystem could turn it into a desert. Just after Lilly's announcement, Walter Gentner, a recently retired research scientist at the U.S. Department of Agriculture, complained that he had been pressured by the State Department to condone use of Spike in Peru before its impact had been assessed...
Others are also skeptical. Michael Pace, a scientist at the Institute of Ecosystem Studies in New York, who reviewed the report before it was released, found it "hard to believe" that airborne sources were so important. "The numbers are very soft," said Pace. "They are only rough estimates...
...local population. The author is a clear and patient observer whose literary surfaces are sometimes broken by a political ripple (the conservation policies of the Reagan Administration, for example, are found wanting, mainly because there are so few of them). Lopez offers no specific program for balancing the ecosystem. Rather, he tries to create an aura of reverence for nature that sometimes has the look of born-again paganism. With musical accompaniment by Paul Winter, a trail companion in one of the book's selections, Lopez could become a guru of the New Age movement...
...rivers, a million acres of wetlands have disappeared since 1900. ^ Scientists now estimate that an additional 60 sq. mi. are vanishing every year -- a rate that could double by 1995. "It's a catastrophe that's happening to the wetlands. You're looking at the genocide of an entire ecosystem," says Oliver Houck, a Louisiana environmental lawyer. Indeed, the loss of the state's marshes affects more than just local residents: the area provides almost 30% of the nation's fish harvest and 40% of the fur catch, and is a winter habitat for some two-thirds of the migratory...
...that a section of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge be opened to drilling. He would permit exploration on 1.5 million acres of the 19-million-acre preserve, which could contain between 600 million and 9 billion bbl. of crude. Conservationists contend that drilling would disturb the region's delicate ecosystem for little reason: a strike, they claim, would add just 4% to U.S. oil reserves. Canada also objects to drilling, for fear that caribou migration patterns would be disrupted. Hodel observed that caribou populations in Prudhoe Bay, 100 miles to the west, are three times what they were before drilling...