Which Ecosystem to protect?
I recently read an interesting article in the New York Times Online. Several issues have been surfacing in the news regarding the global climate as well as the human role in the destruction of the environment.
This article “The Presevation Predicament,”by Cornelia Dean focused on the management of ecosystems if the Earth were to continue on the same evironmentally destructive plan.
I found that numerous environmentally concerned initiatives have been started in the past 100 years, yet conservation organizations are realizing that it may be more important to turn concerns to other areas and save the resources for future sites.
The Nature Conservancy initiative for climate change is working towards focusing its efforts on 10 percent of habitat types such as the freshwater systems, the forests and the grasslands.
Many of these ecosystems come under question as they transform from grasslands into forests, and the question is raised whether or not to preserve the grassland or to allow the trees to grow.
The environmental community is hit with uncertainty, however they concisely agree that it is important to focus on balancing the needs of the present and future, while also preserving the natural habitat and species.
Some scientists have thought that some flora and fauna should be transported to a different ecosystem in an effort to preserve them as their ecosystems are undergoing changes. They call this action, “assisted migration”.
The scientists in this article are taking a step in the right direction by recognizing their assets and using modern knowledge and future uncertainty to protect as many of the world’s ecosystems as possible.
The idea that they must pick and choose which ecosystems to preserve is still upsetting since more money should be given to global concerns, which impact every species on the planet.
