Transcript ch7 and 10 part III

Wangari Maathari and Kenya’s Green Belt
Movement
• Green Belt Movement: 1977
– Self-help group of women in Kenya
– Success of tree planting
• Nobel Peace Prize:
2004
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How Should We Manage and
Sustain
Grasslands
Important ecological services of grasslands
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Soil formation
Erosion control
Nutrient cycling
Storage of atmospheric carbon dioxide in biomass
Maintenance of diversity
• Overgrazing of rangelands (unfenced grassland)
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Reduces grass cover
Leads to erosion of soil by water and wind
Soil becomes compacted
Enhances invasion of plant species that cattle won’t eat
• Malapi Borderlands- Management success story
• Overgrazing and fire suppression degraded area, now
Controlled burns and return of native grasses
We Can Manage Rangelands More Sustainably
• Rotational grazing
– Portable fencing
• Suppress growth of invasive species
– Herbicides
– Mechanical removal
– Controlled burning
– Controlled, short-term trampling
How Should We Manage and Sustain Parks and
Natural Reserves
• Worldwide: 1100 major national parks
• Parks in developing countries
– Greatest biodiversity
• 1% protected against
– Illegal animal poaching
– Illegal logging and mining
STRESSES ON THE NATIONAL PARKS
• 1872- Yellowstone- first national park, but
the park system was established in 1912
• 58 major national parks
• 333 monuments and historic sites
• Too many visitors?
– Traffic, eroded trails, noise, cell phone towers
– Native species are killed or removed
– Expensive to maintain
• Great Smokey Mountains Nat’l Park- most
visited
Yellowstone
National Park
• Sierra Club- founded by John Muir in 1892 and was leader
of the preservationist movement, protect large areas of
wilderness from human exploitation)
• Theodore Roosevelt - “the country’s best environmental
president” the Golden Age of Conservation (1901-1909)
– Established first federal refuge at Pelican Island in Florida to protect
the brown pelican
– Tripled the size of national forest reserves
– US Forest Service established in 1905 to manage and protect
reserves
– Gifford Pinchot - first chief of US Forest Service
• Woodrow Wilson- oversaw the creation of the National
Park Service in 1916
• FDR- Formed the Civilian Conservation Corps in 1933
• Wise-use (conservationist)- Roosevelt and
Pinchot believed all public lands should be
managed wisely and scientifically to provided
needed resources
• Preservationists- Muir (1838-1914) believed
lands should be left undisturbed-helped establish Yosemite National Park in 1890)
Nature Reserves Occupy Only a Small Part of the
Earth’s Land
• Conservationists’ goal: protect 20% of the earth’s land
• Cooperation between government and private groups
• Nature Conservancy – created largest system of private
natural areas and wildlife sanctuaries in 30 countries
• Have protected land, waterways and wetlands
• Eco-philanthropists- buy wilderness areas and donate to
the country
• Developers and resource extractors opposition
Costa Rica
• Smaller than west Virginia
• 1963-1983- much of the forests were cleared for cattle to
graze
• Rich in biodiversity, over 500,000 plant and animal species
• Nature reserves/parks established in 1970s. Now devotes
more land to biodiversity than any other country
• 8 megareserves with an inner core and 2 buffer zones for
the local people
• Government has eliminated subsidies for converting forest
into rangeland and pays land owners to restore tree
coverage, and planted nearly 14 million trees.
• Forest cover has grown from 26% to 51%
• Has one of the lowest deforestation rates
We Can Use a Four-Point Strategy
to Protect Ecosystems
• Map global ecosystems; identify species
• Locate and protect most endangered species
• Restore degraded ecosystems
• Development must be biodiversity-friendly
• Are new laws needed?
Protecting Global Biodiversity Hot Spots Is an
Urgent Priority
• 1988: Norman Myers
– Identify biodiversity hot
spots rich in plant species
• Not sufficient public
support and funding
• Drawbacks of this approach
– May be rich in plant diversity,
but not in animal diversity
– People may be displaced
and/or lose access to
important resources
HOTSPOTS
• Cover about 2% of land surface
• 86% of the habitat has been destroyed
• Contain an estimated 50% of world’s flowering
plants and 42% or terrestrial vertebrates
• Home to most endangered/critically
endangered species.
• Spider tortoise (Madagascar)
THERE ARE 34 HOT SPOTS THAT OCCUPY 2% OF THE
WORLD’S LAND AREA
THE HOTTEST OF THESE HOT
SPOTS ARE TROPICAL ISLANDS
SUCH AS MADAGASCAR,
INDONESIA AND THE
PHILIPINES WHERE
GEOGRAPHIC ISOLATION HAS
RESULTED IN LARGE NUMBERS
OF UNIQUE PLANTS AND
ANIMALS
• U.N. Millennium Ecosystem Assessment: 2005
– Identify key ecosystem services
– Human activities degrade or overuse 62% of the
earth’s natural services
• Identify highly stressed life raft ecosystems
• (where people live in poverty, depend on the
ecosytem services that are being degraded)
• Study how natural ecosystems recover- some of the
damage done by humans can be reversed–
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Restoration
Rehabilitation
Replacement
Creating artificial ecosystems
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Identify what caused the degradation
Stop the abuse
Reintroduce species, if possible
Protect from further degradation
• How to carry out most forms of ecological
restoration and rehabilitation
• Preventing ecosystem damage is cheaper than restoration
• About 5% of the earth’s land is preserved from the effects of
human activities
• We abuse land because we regard it as a
commodity belonging to us. When we see land
as a community to which we belong, we may
begin to use it with love and respect.
• Aldo Leopold