(NAS Colloquium) The Future of Evolution (2002) / Chapter Skim
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The Current Biodiversity Extinction Event: Scenarios for Mitigation and Recovery
The Current Biodiversity Extinction Event: Scenarios for Mitigation and Recovery
Pages 78-82
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From page 78... ...
First, ancient mass extinction events have been documented over comparatively long or imprecise timescales. The current crisis has been extended through historical times, a matter of centuries or a millennium, with a greatly accelerated impact that began during the 20th century with the exponential increase of world human populations.
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From page 79... ...
Near-Term Scenarios for Recovery: A Strategy Given the limited applicability of the record of past extinction events for examining the current environmental crisis, it seems appropriate to turn to near-term recovery scenarios namely, scenarios that relate to human intervention just as they flow from human causation. Such a consideration involves at least three steps.
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From page 80... ...
Recovery efforts aimed at correcting the destructive aspects of nitrogen deposition often hinge on a simple recognition of the problem. Conservation actions to secure wildlife reserves rarely take into account the fact that nitrogen can negatively affect such reserves.
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From page 81... ...
These recommendations inspired government action that would represent the most significant effort to reverse more than a century of dam building and help restore the nations rivers and their biodiversity (39~. Biodiversity Loss and Recovery Scenarios in Human-Dominated Ecosystems Repeated throughout this discussion is the notion that the success of any restoration or recovery practice hinges on the state of what "we've caught in the net." Thus, vastly improved information on the basic state of the world biota and the various comparative states of degradation ongoing or projected remains a profoundly important goal for the conservation of biodiversity.
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From page 82... ...
In addition, many plans for conservation and restoration in human-dominated ecosystems have not achieved sufficient connections between agricultural or harvesting practices and biological sciences. A number of threats to Biodiversity require particularly intensive international cooperation and input from the scientific community to mitigate their harmful effects, including climate change and alteration of global biogeochemical cycles.
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