From its inception, the U.S. Department of the Interior has been charged with a conflicting mission. One set of statutes demands that the department must develop America's lands, that it get our trees, water, oil, and minerals out into the marketplace. Yet an opposing set of laws orders us to conserve these same resources, to preserve them for the long term and to consider the noncommodity values of our public landscape. That dichotomy, between rapid exploitation and long-term protection, demands what I see as the most significant policy departure of my tenure in office: the use of science-interdisciplinary science-as the primary basis for land management decisions. For more than a century, that has not been the case. Instead, we have managed this dichotomy by compartmentalizing the American landscape. Congress and my predecessors handled resource conflicts by drawing enclosures: "We'll create a national park here," they said, "and we'll put a wildlife refuge over there." Simple enough, as far as protection goes. And outside those protected areas, the message was equally simplistic: "Y'all come and get it. Have at it." The nature and the pace of the resource extraction was not at issue; if you could find it, it was yours.

Meeting today’s environmental challenges requires a new way of thinking about the intricate dependencies between humans and nature. Ecology and Ecosystem Conservation provides students and other readers with a basic understanding of the fundamental principles of ecological science and their applications, offering an essential overview of the way ecology can be used to devise strategies to conserve the health and functioning of ecosystems. The book begins by exploring the need for ecological science in understanding current environmental issues and briefly discussing what ecology is and isn’t. Subsequent chapters address critical issues in conservation and show how ecological science can be applied to them. The book explores questions such as: • What is the role of ecological science in decision making? • What factors govern the assembly of ecosystems and determine their response to various stressors? • How does Earth’s climate system function and determine the distribution of life on Earth? • What factors control the size of populations? • How does fragmentation of the landscape affect the persistence of species on the landscape? • How does biological diversity influence ecosystem processes? The book closes with a final chapter that addresses the need not only to understand ecological science, but to put that science into an ecosystem conservation ethics perspective.

Our day-to-day experiences over the past decade have taught us that there must be limits to our tremendous appetite for energy, natural resources, and consumer goods. Even utility and oil companies now promote conservation in the face of demands for dwindling energy reserves. And for years some biologists have warned us of the direct correlation between scarcity and population growth. These scientists see an appalling future riding the tidal wave of a worldwide growth of population and technology. A calm but unflinching realist, Catton suggests that we cannot stop this wave - for we have already overshot the Earth's capacity to support so huge a load. He contradicts those scientists, engineers, and technocrats who continue to write optimistically about energy alternatives. Catton asserts that the technological panaceas proposed by those who would harvest from the seas, harness the winds, and farm the deserts are ignoring the fundamental premise that "the principals of ecology apply to all living things." These principles tell us that, within a finite system, economic expansion is not irreversible and population growth cannot continue indefinitely. If we disregard these facts, our sagging American Dream will soon shatter completely.

contributors - biologists, ecologists, geomorphologists, historians, hydrologists, lawyers, and political scientists - weave together threads from their diverse perspectives to reveal the processes that shape the past, present, and future of the San Pedro's riparian and aquatic ecosystems. They review the biological communities of the San Pedro and the stream hydrology and geomorphology that affects its riparian biota. They then look at conservation and management challenges along three sections of the San Pedro, from its headwaters in Mexico in its confluence with the Gila River, describing legal and policy issues and their interface with science; activities related to mitigation, conservation, and restoration; and a prognosis of the potential for sustaining the basin's riparian system." "Complemented by a foreword written by James Shuttleworth, these chapters demonstrate the complexity of the San Pedro's ecological and hydrological conditions, showing that there are no easy --