The following excerpts are from five articles by Virginia Morell '71 published in the February 1999 issue of National Geographic, devoted to biodiversity.
from: Diversity of Life
Botanists have long marveled at the variety of plants packed along the southwestern edge of the tip of Africa. Proteas, leathery-leaved shrubs with flowers the size of soup bowls, heatherlike ericas, irises, orchids, and succulents all vie for a place in the sun.
To explain how this mosaic of greenery has come about, botanists John Manning and Peter Goldblatt lead the way through low clumps of stiff, spiky-leaved plants that cover the sandstone, shale, and limestone soils of South Africa's cape region. Although much of the flora looks alike--twiggy shrubs with tiny, dark green leaves--the botanists note that almost every plant we stop to inspect is a distinct species from a different genus and family. Indeed, the plants that make up the fynbos, as this unique type of vegetation is collectively known, are among the most diverse in the world. Because botanists find new species here every year, that tally of diversity keeps growing.
The cape's 35,000 square miles harbor nearly 9,000 species of plants; California, four times that size, is home to only 5,500. It's those kinds of discrepancies that scientists like Manning and Goldblatt are trying to understand. Why in some parts of the world, such as the cape and the Ecuadorian rain forest, is there such an exuberance of life?...
from: Wilderness Headcount
"I'm being bitten by the flies that carry leishmaniasis," says Louise Emmons, a hint of irritation in her voice. We're perched on a bench-high root of a soaring fig tree, one of two that flank a small, muddy sinkhole. Night has just fallen, and under the Peruvian forest canopy there isn't a glimmer of light. "And what does that fly's bite feel like?" I ask, trying to mimic her field biologist's air of indifference. "Not much. A pinprick. You'll know if you get it," she adds. "You'll get a sore that doesn't heal." A dark thought for a dark night, I think gloomily.
But Emmons, a small-mammal expert at the Smithsonian Institution, isn't one to dwell on such hazards. She's spotted a bat's swift flutter overhead and is already on her feet, her headlamp switched on. "We've got some more coming in," she calls to her two Peruvian colleagues, who quickly join her. The trio beam their headlamps down the length of net they've strung between the fig trees. And there, flapping as futilely as I had at the flies, are half a dozen bats. There is always the possibility--and anticipation--that at least one will be new: a species never seen by a scientist until that moment, and one perhaps that lives only in this forest and so is one of those intriguing creatures that scientists call endemics. ...
from: The Sixth Extinction
In London, at the Royal Botanic Gardens at Kew, two horticulturalists lead the way through a greenhouse, stopping to point out plants, from shrubs to spindly trees, that no longer exist in the wild. Kew researchers hope eventually to return some to their homelands. But for others the greenhouse is the end of the line.
"Now that poor thing, an Encephalartos woodii, hasn't had sex in about a hundred years," says Stefan Czeladzinski, a horticulturalist-in-training, referring to one of the trees. "It's one of our living dead." The plant, about five feet tall with leathery leaves, is from Natal in South Africa. It is a dioecious species, meaning that its individuals are either male or female. In this case the plant is a male, and no females are known to exist. "Botanists have combed Natal looking for one, but they've never found it," says Czeladzinski. This survivor comes from cuttings from the last wild plant, which was moved to a botanical garden decades ago. All E. woodii plants alive today, including the lonely Kew specimen, are clones of that wild male; they are genetically identical and will never reproduce naturally unless a female is found.
And it's not just the Encephalartos that has been lost. Most of the native flora of many islands is extinct, beaten out by species that settlers introduced from Europe more than 300 years ago. ...
from: Restoring Madagascar
A decade ago, ... astronauts could see Madagascar's red earth bleeding into the sea. Nearly all the environmental damage stemmed from agricultural practices. Traditional farmers use slash-and-burn methods here, and a growing population (now about 14 million and expected to double by the year 2021) led to the clearing of more land. In the worst cases nearly a hundred tons of topsoil an acre were being lost each year. And while that flow has yet to be fully stanched, some progress has been made. Still scientists estimate that unless these farming methods change, virtually all the island's forests will be gone within 25 years.
Alarmed by that prediction, the government of Madagascar is working hand in hand with several international conservation and aid agencies to kindle in its citizens a sense of pride and ownership in the nation's biodiversity. ...
from: In Search of Solutions
"Most of the parks in the Philippines are parks only on paper," says [biologist Danilo] Balete, a slightly built man in his 30s, who helped survey Isarog's mammals and birds in the late 1980s--often with the whine and roar of chain saws echoing in the background. "We have to accept that parks here are different from those in the United States," he says. "People were living in and around these parks and using their resources from the beginning, so the idea that everything inside their boundaries wasn't going to be touched was simply unenforceable."
But in the past few years the logging has largely stopped. [Naty] Dumalagan's husband and other villagers now work as volunteer guards, helping to stop the illegal cutting of timber. "Yes it means less money for us," Dumalagan says, nodding her head. "But we know what will happen if we continue to cut Isarog's trees--there will be landslides, like those in Ormoc." She and Balete exchange a glance.
The last old-growth forests in the mountains above the city of Ormoc were logged out by the end of the 1980s, Balete explains. When a typhoon struck in 1991, the rushing water swept down two rivers, carrying rocks, broken trees and masses of mud into the heart of Ormoc. As many as 7,000 people died. ...
The full text of some of these articles is available at Web site of National Geographic Magazine.
