Word: ecosystems
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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Environmentalist Carlton, whose lawsuit prodded the government to move on the mouse, says what the state may be scheming is "an end-run around the law to subvert restoring the ecosystem. You might have to move a golf course or road 100 ft. or so, but protection isn't going to do in anybody. There's a lot of fear-mongering going on." The Fish and Wildlife Service, apparently agreeing, contends that in 95% of cases only minimal disruption occurs when species are listed as endangered...
...University's] vision of itself as being self-contained is obsolete. My guess as to where [the higher education system] should go is towards more of an ecosystem," he says, suggesting that universities and the government cooperate to make decisions about research and education...
...consequences of such carnage were soon felt. An ecosystem stripped of the wolf doesn't simply become more peaceable; rather, it becomes flabby and unbalanced. With the dominant predator gone, the next biggest hunter--typically the coyote--assumes the top spot. As the coyote population explodes, the populations of foxes, badgers and martens, which compete with coyotes for rodents and other small game, dwindle. At the same time, large prey like elk, which were once brought down by wolves, begin to multiply excessively, stripping vegetation from highlands. And with no elk carcasses lying around, scavengers like magpies, ravens and grizzly...
...Yellowstone that cascade has long been felt, and since the 1930s, wildlife managers have watched in dismay as the park's ecosystem--once well balanced between predator and prey--grew more and more bottom-heavy. Finally, in the 1970s, they decided to do something about it. Working through the then new Endangered Species Act, they proposed a plan under which wolves would be imported from Canada to reclaim their place in the ecosystem. Twenty years later, the plan was approved, and wolves were trucked from across the border--31 to Yellowstone and 35 to Idaho...
...worst pain inflicted by the louse may be psychological, the disgust and embarrassment of discovering that one's head is an ecosystem for insects. "It is a very traumatic experience," says Copeland, whose daughter suffered from head lice while attending an upscale girls' school in San Francisco. "I think it goes back to some primitive reaction. We just go crazy with lice...