I don’t know if you caught the NY Times article about a Ms. Malmberg who travels the west offering
her goat herd to help restore fire-ravaged land and to prevent future wildfires. Goats eat the type of
vegetation that cows and sheep don’t and that serve as kindling for wildfires. The goat’s waste also serves
as an organic fertilizer that increases the capability of the soil to hold water to help with reforestation.
The goats are allowed to browse the vegetation as long as they want to. In contrast, remember the Yellowstone tale where the elimination of wolves led to elk overbrowsing of plants and the decimation of
the park’s landscape. Re-introduction of wolves altered the elk’s browsing habits
enough to restore the park. Two contrasting scenarios. The science that covers all
of this is ecology.
Too often, the term ecology is used as a synonym for the environment, but, in actuality, it’s a subset of environmental sciences. The term environment includes all aspects of a particular area including climate, topography, flora, and fauna. Environmental science uses biology, physics, chemistry, minerology, geology,
zoology, and oceanography (where applicable) to describe the physical aspects of that particular area of interest. Ecology then describes how the organisms in that area interact with each other and with the physical environment. In a scientific sense, the environment sets the initial conditions under which the ecology evaluates the organisms and resulting community. Of course, organism interactions can change the environment as we witnessed with the wolves at Yellowstone.
In the 1960s I read the book, The Web of Life by John. H. Storor, which described the interaction of bacteria, insects, plants, birds, and mammals in the forest and how it related it to the science of ecology. It’s probably a bit dated now, but back then it served as my introduction to the environment and to ecology, and probably inspired my involvement in the environmental movement. In some ways, it reminded me of
the systems that I was studying in engineering school and how each component interacts with the other. The title says it all. The Web of Life. Everything interacts and how sometimes a minor change can have major impacts. We all know some of these interactions. Bees pollinating plants. Squirrels burying acorns that lead to new oak trees. Then there are some subtle ones, like climate change leading to longer
summer seasons and warmer temperatures in northern climates, thereby allowing the ash borer to move north and decimate ash tree forests (and our backyards here in Buffalo).
Too often, in our concern about climate change, we only consider the environmental changes leading to things like rising seas and flooding, destructive hurricanes and tornadoes, draught in farm areas, and massive forest fires. We forget about ecology and the more subtle and not-so-subtle ecological changes that are occurring and what effect that can have on us and our planet. Combating climate change is more
than just eliminating greenhouse gases.
The Green Team Needs You It’s time to get the Green Team moving again. Anyone interested in participating or with suggestion/ideas for Green Team activities please contact me at: 716-544-4576.
Last Updated on 11/01/2021 by Marc Slonim