Ecosystems and the Environment

• Choices like what we eat, wear, and drive impact the environment.
• Environmental scientists study human impact on the world and seek solutions to environmental issues.
• Reducing environmental impacts involves both consumers and producers.

The Environment and Ecosystems

• The environment includes all living and nonliving things on Earth that sustain life.
• These components interact to create conditions suitable for life.
• A system involves components interacting to achieve outcomes that individual components cannot.
• Ecosystems consist of living communities and their physical environments.
• Ecosystem relationships are multifaceted, with organisms responding to, utilizing, and modifying their environment.
• Ecosystem services are the benefits humans derive from naturally functioning ecosystems.
• These services include waste assimilation, nutrient cycling, and climate regulation.
• The Anthropocene Epoch is characterized by significant human effects on the planet.
• Forests, wetlands, rivers, and prairies are converted to cities and farms, impacting habitats for other species.

Sustainability

• Human effects may impact the future of life on Earth, raising concerns about protecting Earth’s resources.
• Sustainability is managing natural resources to ensure their future availability without diminishing Earth’s ability to provide.
• Sustainability involves planning for resource use, allocation, and management.
• The Global Reporting Initiative sets standards for tracking the impacts of practices by businesses, governments, and citizens.
• Sustainable development meets present needs without compromising future generations' ability to meet their needs.
• It considers the 3Es: environment, economy, and equity.
• In 2016, the UN issued 17 sustainable development goals addressing the 3Es for nations to use as guidelines.
• Goals include environmental protection, economic growth, and equity promotion.
• Progress is measured by specific indicators like pollution levels and protected areas.
• Each country decides how to pursue these goals.
• Ecological resilience is how well an environment resists degradation and recovers after disruption.
• Planning for sustainability and resilience involves forward-thinking processes like flood planning with new construction designs and wetland preservation.

Science

• Science is a way to ask and answer questions while testing ideas about the natural world using evidence.
• The scientific method is a structured inquiry process for testing problems and ideas.
• It involves identifying a problem, proposing a hypothesis, conducting experiments, gathering and evaluating data, and refining or rejecting the hypothesis.
• Research determines whether observations align with expectations and hypothesis, providing supporting evidence.
• Controlled experiments intentionally manipulate a system aspect to observe the effect on the outcome.
• The test group is subject to change, while the control group remains unchanged.
• Natural (observational) studies are conducted when controlled experiments are not feasible or ethical.
• Models are simplified representations of complex processes to understand interactions among factors.
• Hindcasting uses initial conditions from the past to test model accuracy against actual events.

Challenges to Good Science

• Scientific inquiry requires caution and skepticism.
• Fraud is deceiving people by communicating false findings and science must be reproducible and open to revision.
• Pseudoscience is based on claims not resulting from scientific inquiry or derived without scientific scrutiny.
• Bias is unreasonable weighting, inclination, or prejudice leading to misunderstandings.
• Misinformation is false or incorrect information spread intentionally or unintentionally.
• Peer review refines research design and ensures conclusions are evidence-based.
• Experts assess work, provide feedback, identify errors, and suggest further research.
• Publication in a journal indicates confidence in the procedures and conclusions meeting scientific standards.

Shaping Decisions on the Environment

• Sustainability involves acting on environmental issues.
• Science informs our understanding, but values determine our actions.
• Values reflect how we want things to be and guide our actions.
• Decisions are influenced by biases, priorities, and social pressure.
• Trade-offs are the pros and cons of actions and public strategies alter trade-offs.
• Communication strategies and incentives influence decisions.
• Footprint analysis assesses the magnitude of individual and collective environmental impact.
• Ecological footprint analysis translates consumption into land resources needed.
• The United States, China, and India have the largest footprints.
• Carbon footprints estimate greenhouse gas emissions from activities.
• Individuals gain influence through social networks.
• Organizations link networks for shared purposes, amplifying impact.
• Decisions covered in the book include Earth's processes, effects of our actions, and influence of governments and organizations.

Personal Actions

• Purchases should consider sustainability.
• Some companies allocate resources to sustainability and provide footprint analyses.
• Used items can be sold or donated.
• Participate in sustainability groups on campus.
• Technology can play a role in sustainable development.
• Internet-connected devices can impact sustainability.

Ethics, Economics, and Policy

• Environmental challenges involve ethical, economic, and policy considerations.
• Ethics are moral principles guiding behavior.
• Understanding economics helps trace environmental impacts.
• Understanding government informs policy influence.

Ethics

• Ethics are moral principles guiding behavior and combining beliefs and values.
• Ethical principles apply to environmental decisions beyond ourselves.
• Deontological ethics assesses actions based on general rules with duties and rights.
• Rights and duties emphasize intrinsic value and the Earth Charter outlines duties for people on Earth.
• Utilitarianism defines what is right by maximizing good and minimizing harm for the greatest number.
• Both deontological ethics and utilitarianism assess impacts on future generations and nonhumans.
• Applying ethics considers how we ought to behave in relation to others.
• Anthropocentrism considers only effects on people.
• Biocentrism says all living things have intrinsic value.
• Animal rights activists advocate for sentient beings' protection.
• Ecocentrism includes living and nonliving components of ecosystems.
• Aldo Leopold's land ethic includes soil, water, animals, and plants, while also acknowledging the natural state of existence.

Environment and the Economy

• Consumption involves exchange or transaction.
• Raw materials are extracted, processed, and distributed.
• Economic systems shape production, distribution, and consumption.
• Choices in economic systems affect the environment.
• Supply and demand influence distribution of goods.
• Demand measures willingness to pay and supply measures availability of goods.
• The market brings buyers and sellers together and is affected by governments.
• Adam Smith's "Wealth of Nations" forms the basis of modern markets.
• The ideal market is an "invisible hand" adjusting production and prices.
• Supply and demand form naturally from market interactions.
• Prices can disrupt the economy in disasters or shortages.
• Governments can intervene in markets to influence prices.
• They set prices, regulate goods and services, and collect taxes, which is a source of political debate.
• Market economies have little government intervention.
• Command economies have government direction.
• Scarcity inspires innovation and substitution.
• Increased prices lead to technological advances and creativity.
• Efficiency increases, reducing resource use and saving money like hybrid and electric vehicles.
• Improved technologies lead to increased supplies, lower prices, and increased consumption.
• Jevons paradox says efficiency lowers prices, increasing demand.
• The steam engine increased coal supply and lowered costs, leading to new applications.
• The relationship between production, efficiency, price, innovation, and increased consumption explains environmental effects.

Economics and Environmental Problems

• Externalities occur when markets don't account for all associated impacts.
• Negative externalities are costs that don't fall on those involved in an interaction.
• Product prices don't reflect true costs.
• Coal is inexpensive but has negative externalities like health harms, emissions, and land damage of $500 billion/year.
• The true cost of coal is higher than its current price.
• Goods with negative externalities are overproduced.
• Governments address negative externalities through regulations, taxes, and exchanges.
• These create incentives for firms to reduce pollution like in cap and trade systems.
• True cost accounting estimates direct and indirect costs, helping consumers decide.
• The tragedy of the commons is a negative externality where resources are overexploited.
• Lack of social structures, policies, or costs leads to resource degradation.
• Solutions include regulations, protected areas, penalties, and privatization.
• Communities protect resources through meetings and shared control.
• Positive externalities include clean water and air and opportunities for recreation.
• Markets underproduce positive externalities.
• Positive externalities overlap with public goods.
• Public goods can't be profitably produced due to difficulty excluding nonpaying customers.
• Governments ensure provision of public goods.
• Economists try to determine the value of goods and services, including nature.
• It’s harder to value aspects of nature without market value.
• Ecosystem services assign value to benefits from ecosystems.

Environmental Policy

• Government policy affects daily routines.
• Governments set standards, policies, taxes, infrastructure, and zoning.
• Policies are laws, regulations, and rulings guiding behavior.
• Governments influence behavior through policies.
• Policy changes affect daily life such as those in the 1960s and 1970s establishing environmental goals and standards.
• Policy making confronts challenges and involves political struggles.
• Politics involves decisions made for a group of people on high-stakes matters.
• Power struggles occur between competing interests.
• Interest groups share common goals.
• Lobbying persuades government decision makers.
• Interest groups support candidates and mobilize public opinion.
• Stages include identifying problems, crafting policy, approving policy, implementing policy, and evaluating policy.
• Environmental policies involve managing natural resources and regulating pollution.
• In 1872, Yellowstone was set aside as the first national park.
• In the twentieth century, the National Park Service, US Forest Service, Bureau of Land Management, and US Fish and Wildlife Service were established.
• Protections for public lands were set in the 1960s and 1970s.
• The Wilderness Act of 1964 gave protection for federal lands.
• The National Environmental Policy Act of 1970 and the Endangered Species Act of 1973 affected actions of federal agencies.
• The Clean Air Act and the Clean Water Act govern pollution.
• The EPA was created in 1970 and sets standards, enforces them, and issues permits.
• CERCLA (Superfund) identifies hazardous waste sites for cleanup.
• The Toxic Substances Control Act lets the EPA regulate chemical substances.
• State and local levels regulate water, land, and energy.
• States meet federal standards and enact stricter policies.
• States have jurisdiction over water usage, utilities, and natural resources.
• Local governments pass zoning ordinances.
• Humans affect the environment beyond borders, so countries coordinate actions.
• Dealing with transboundary issues is politically challenging.
• IGOs allow countries to collaborate.
• The UN is the largest IGO.
• International agreements commit signatories to actions to meet goals.
• Reaching international agreements is challenging.

Economic power

• Exercising economic power daily has impacts over time.
• Refilling water bottles avoids single use plastics and supporting environmentally friendly businesses.
• Boycotts can motivate companies to change practices.

Influencing Public Policy

• Influence public policy by voting based on your issues.
• Research elected officials and influence them directly.
• Know your representatives and communicate with them by writing letters, calling their offices, attending town hall meetings, and visiting their office in person.
• Attend agency public meetings and comment on proposed rules and regulations.

Matter and Energy

• "Nothing is lost, nothing is created, everything is transformed." - Antoine Lavoisier.
• Matter and energy affect choices about the environment like forest fires.
• To make decisions on sustainability, we must understand the basic science of matter and energy and solve environmental problems.

Matter

• All tangible things are made of matter, anything that takes up space and has mass.
• Matter comes in forms such as solids, liquids, gases, living/nonliving things, and human-built things, and is vast but finite.
• An element is a substance that cannot be broken down into other substances like gold.
• An atom is the smallest unit of an element that still has the characteristics of that element.
• Protons are positively charged and determine the element’s atomic number.
• Electrons carry a negative charge and orbit the nucleus in paths (shells).
• If the number of protons equals the number of electrons, the atom is electrically neutral.
• An ion is a charged atom due to lost or gained electrons.
• Neutrons are particles in the nucleus that don’t have a charge.
• An isotope is an atom of an element with a different number of neutrons (15N has one more neutron than 14N).

Kinds of Matter

• Physical properties depend on kind of atoms, how atoms are connected, and the way atoms are arranged.
• A molecule is made of two or more atoms joined/bonded together like O2.
• A compound is a molecule that contains atoms of two or more elements, like H2O.
• Law of conservation of mass: compounds can be combined, split, or reduced, but matter cannot be created or destroyed and the mass of the constituent parts in a chemical reaction remains unchanged, even as the atoms in a reaction are rearranged.
• The precise ordering and joining of atoms determine the properties of molecules and materials.
• Chemical bonds are the forces that hold atoms in molecules together.
• Ionic bond: very strong bond that forms when one atom “donates” its electrons to another atom
• Metallic bond: metal atoms share outer electrons, which move freely among the metal atoms, making metals malleable and good conductors of electricity
• Covalent bond: hard to break bond that forms when pairs of atoms share electrons that can shift between the joined atoms (N2, O2, H2O)
• Hydrogen bond: a weak bond that forms when a hydrogen atom is attracted to an atom with a negative charge with water having polarity, a slight imbalance of positive and negative charges within an atom.
• Acids are compounds that yield positively charged hydrogen ions when dissolved in water. Strong acids (sulfuric acid) have a higher concentration of H+ than weaker acids (orange juice, vinegar).
• Bases are compounds that yield negatively charged hydroxide ions when dissolved in water. Strong bases (bleach) have a higher concentration of OH- than weaker bases (blood, baking soda).
• The pH scale expresses the strength of acid and base solutions.
• pH = 7 neutral, < 7 = acidic, > 7 = basic
• Slight changes in pH can have large effects.

Changing Matter

• Matter can undergo physical (phase changes) and chemical changes (chemical reactions).
• Phase change: a change in matter from one state to another, without a change in its chemical composition
• Atoms are always in motion and vibrating.
• In solids, they vibrate slowly and their rigid arrangement is held by strong bonds that give them a fixed volume and shape.
• Atoms in liquids vibrate more rapidly and are held by loosely attractive forces, giving liquids a fixed volume but changeable shape.
• Atoms in gases vibrate rapidly and randomly, and the molecules are not bonded to each other, so gases have neither a fixed volume or shape, where pressure results from continuous physical forces of the colliding molecules acting against something.
• Molecules are able to not only change their state of matter, molecules or chemical reactions can break molecules and convert them into different substances.
• Oxidation-reduction reaction (redox): always occurs together and involves the transfer of electrons between atoms where oxidation involves electron loss and reduction involves electron gain
• Polymerization: many smaller molecules link up to create complex, chain-like structures
• Depolymerization: breaks down biopolymers

Energy

• The universe contains heat, light, and motion in addition to matter.
• Energy is the capacity to do work by applying force to some object over some distance.
• Kinetic energy is motion like a flying bird, a moving car, a falling rock.
• Potential energy has not yet been released like water behind a dam, a rock on a cliff.
• Mechanical energy can push, pull, lift, throw, or otherwise exert force on some object to move it some distance.
• Chemical energy is stored in the bonds of atoms and molecules, and released with chemical reactions.
• Electrical energy is created by moving electrons along a wire or other conductive material that can be transformed directly into mechanical energy.
• Radiant energy comes from the Sun and is the common source of all energy.
• Thermal energy comes from the movement of molecules, and temperature measures how vigorously the atoms move.
• Light from the Sun is made of tiny photons that power photosynthesis, which uses water and CO2 to produce glucose.
• Nuclear energy is contained within the nuclei of atoms.
• Nuclear fusion fuses nuclei together and happens in the Sun.
• Nuclear fission splits the nucleus of an atom, producing different atoms.
• Geothermal energy comes from Earth’s core and powers global processes.

Used Energy

• Energy, like matter, is constant in the universe.
• The first law of thermodynamics says that energy cannot be created or destroyed but it can be changed into another form.
• The second law of thermodynamics says that with each transformation or transfer of energy, some energy is degraded.
• Heat is considered a degraded quality of energy that escapes into the universe where energy conversion is never 100% efficient and some always escapes as heat.
• Entropy is a measure of the degree of disorder in a system where without energy input, entropy increases.
• Highly organized systems need constant inputs of energy, or disorder occurs.

Energy Affects Life

• Living things are categorized by their trophic level which indicates their place in the food chain,
• The food chain illustrates how organisms get their energy from food.
• Primary producers transform sunlight into chemical energy through photosynthesis.
• Primary consumers get their energy from eating plants.
• Secondary consumers are carnivores and omnivores that consume primary consumers.
• Tertiary consumers eat secondary consumers.
• Decomposers feed on dead organisms.
• Organisms at each trophic level transform energy they eat into biomass, but transformations are never 100% efficient.
• The 10% law estimates that only 10% of energy is transferred between trophic levels, with 90% lost through heat, waste, and cellular respiration.
• There is less energy, biomass, and fewer organisms at higher trophic levels.
• Organisms at higher trophic levels need more of the Sun’s energy to produce their body mass than organisms at lower trophic levels.

Actions

• Actions include understanding connections and supporting companies meeting standards of environmental protection.
• Lobby for sustainable practices on campus and contact your school’s office of sustainability to promote sustainable practices.
• Learn to follow the matter and use materials that are easily recycled: steel, tin, paper, plastic, circuit boards.
• Do not use products that contain unnecessary polluting material—use more sustainable alternatives.

Life and Biodiversity

• Scientists have identified over 2 million species of animals.
• Humans are reducing biodiversity and threatening species' survival.
• Sustainabilty means to find ways to support earth's diversity.

Living Things

• Living things share characteristics such as maintaining physical form, responding to changes in the environment, using energy to order and reorder components, and responding to changes to repair their parts and reproduce.
• We study living things at different scales such as populations, communities, ecosystems, biomes, and the biosphere.
• Evolution describes the process of genetic change in populations and shows how life has changed over geologic time

Evolution

• Charles Darwin studied organisms and their habitat.
• Traits are well adapted to surroundings such variations in physical traits are passed to offspring through reproduction.
• In natural selection, organisms better adapted to their environment survive and produce more offspring.
• Through adaptive radiation, one ancestral species can branch into different, related species adapted to different environmental conditions.
• Each species is adapted to specific niches related to the ecosystem.
• Darwin did not know how traits are passed down.
• An organism’s genes, composed of DNA determine the organism traits.
• Individuals inherit a gene form from each of their parents, the combination of alleles (pairing) affects traits.
• Variations in the genes come through mutations, which are random changes to the DNA to provide new genetics.
• Positive selection occurs when beneficial mutations make an individual better suited to its environment.
• Negative selection occurs when mutations make it less likely for individuals to survive and reproduce
• Extinction, the complete and permanent loss of a species.
• Human activities are causing extinction events.
• There is a misconception that Evolution = progress: and that evolution produces individuals that are perfectly suited to their environment.
• Individuals cannot evolve, by acting on each other can evolution change the genetics.
• Natural selection of traits are adapted to a particular environment that does not involve intent or effort of the individual.
• In evolution, only the fittest individuals survive relates to their ability to pass one's genes to the next generation.

Causes of Population Traits Changing

• Speciation is the process subsets of a population diverge, genetically to no longer produce fertile offspring when they interbreed.
• Most speciation begins with geographic factors that involve the separation of populations, these overtime separate.
• Geographic barriers between populations can result in reproductive isolation, the inability of populations to interbreed due to differences in morphology, behavior, timing of reproduction, or genetics.
• Gene flow is the transfer of genetic material in populations due to interbreeding through migration, which adds genetic diversity.
• Genetic diversity describes the number of different kinds of genetic characteristics within a population or species.
• A population with high genetic has a wide range of characteristics, and individuals differ more from each other.
• Gene flow through migration increases genetic diversity.
• Inbreeding occurs between closely related individuals when populations are small and it reduces genetic diversity.
• Outbreeding occurs when genetically distinct individuals breed and it increases genetic diversity.

Shaping Biodiversity

• Environmental conditions determine what organisms are present in an area.
• Species richness describes the number of different kinds of species in an area.
• Species evenness describes the relative abundance of each species in an area.
• The pattern of the latitudinal gradient is that tropical regions have greater species richness than other areas.
• Biomes are categories of land-based ecosystems that are organized by general climatic conditions.
• Aquatic life zones apply the same organizational principles to freshwater and saltwater bodies.
• Particular biomes are found in widely different places on Earth because they share similarities and function.

Interactions of Communities

• Competition occurs when one individual reduces the availability of resources.
• Intraspecific competition occurs among members of the same species. (Exploitation and intereference)
• Herbivores are predators of plants,
• Interspecific competition occurs when individuals of different species try to obtain a resource, either through exploitation or interference
• Coevolution occurs when the adaptations of one species cause a second species to adapt, which may cause another adaptation in the first species in an “evolutionary arms race.”
• Symbiotic interactions occur when two organisms are closely associated with each other.
• In a parasitic relationship, one organism is harmed and the other is helped.
• Commensalism benefits one organism but has no effect on the other.
• Mutualism benefits both organisms.

Population Size

• Additions occur through reproduction or immigration and loss occurs through deaths or emigration.
• If births and immigration equal deaths and emigration, the population is in equilibrium.
• Exponential growth is a constant increase of individuals over time, with the carrying capacity being the maximum number of individuals of a species a habitat can support indefinitely.
• Density-independent factors have no relationship to density dependance with the environmental conditions.
• An r-strategist’s has a rapid growth rate, to produce lots of offspring but not invest resources in their care and these species are usually small, have short life spans, thrive in unstable environments
• K-strategists have have a slower reproductive rate, with taking lots of care of the offspring, with the species usually relatively large with long life spans in stable area's.

Biodiversity Loss

• Extinction is a natural event, that occurs has a steady pace.
• Identifying biodiversity hot spots: are places where large numbers of species are particularly vulnerable to extinction.
• Keystone species exhibit a strong influence over the abundance and diversity of other organisms in the ecosystem.

What You Can Do

• Create wildlife-friendly habitats where you live.
• This makes a difference even in very small spaces, like an apartment balcony.
• Reduce some of the negative effects on wildlife where you live.
• Minimize your impact on wildlife when you are out enjoying nature.

Conservation

• Pacific salmon are are desirable and valuable fish declining, with the US government restricting some harvests, and also having funded projects to help the population
• Salmon live in the sea, spawn, and lay eggs in rivers and streams.
• After swimming upstream to lay they decompose releasing nutrients into the water and forest ecosystems that return to stream of birth.

Earth's Biodiversity

• Human actions are causing a sixth mass extinction.
• Conservation groups prioritize protection in biodiversity.
• Humans change habitats of other species to pursue our own needs and desires through such things as agriculture, roads, residential development, and mines.
• Habitat is fragmented carved up by roads and development.
• Humans overexploit species directly through hunting and fishing.
• Introduction of invasive species occurs Organisms in a new area become overabundant because they don’t have natural controls.
• Introduction of species that carry pathogens.
• Dams and water diversions disrupt fish migrations and reduce the quantity of water along with degrading water quality.
• Climate change has wide-ranging effects on species.

Protecting Biodiversity

• Instrumental value is the usefulness of a particular species for humans.
• Intrinsic value is the value of something in and of itself, apart from its usefulness to others.
• Loss of species diversity reduces the productivity and resilience of ecosystems and damages their function.
• Ecosystem services assign to human benefits derived from naturally functioning ecosystems
• Provisioning services are the goods (for example, food and water)
• Regulating services favorable conditions for humans, such as erosion reduction.
• Supporting services essential to other ecosystems
• Cultural services enhance our quality of life with recreation, hunting and fishing.
• Value chains are economic assessments that integrate the value of the good itself and the market value of things linked to the production of that good.
• The replacement cost is an estimate of how much it would cost to replace an ecosystem service with an artificial substitute.
• Stated preferences are through surveys to determine how much individuals would be willing to pay to realize one environmental condition over another.
• Revealed preferences estimate the value people place on something based on their actions.

Criticism

• There may be criticism to protecting endangered species, with ecosystem functions sometimes not benefiting humans.
• The justification to destroy ecosystems is if their economic value is not obvious.
• If humans develop artificial substitutes for natural services, the motivation to protect the original service might be lost.

Protected Areas

• Government authorities can create areas where ecosystems are protected.
• National parks are areas protected by the National Park Service that provide critical habitat to species now mostly absent from their original range.
• National parks are mandated for preservation and protection of fish and animals.
• The federal government owns a lot of land managed by the National Park Service, US Fish and Wildlife Service, US Forest Service, and Bureau of Land Management.
• There is protected rivers, aquatic and marine, areas, as well as international designations of protected status..
• National parks, monuments, and recreation areas are made to protect National park land and ecosystems for biodiversity to the access of public.
• In 1960 new parks prioritized access and ecosystem protection
• The US Fish and Wildlife Service the administers national wildlife refuges covering public land.
• Hunting and fishing are allowed, but any use must be compatible with the purpose of each refuge.
• The US Forest Service manages forest reserves for purposes like timber, recreation, fish, and wildlife conservation.
• However laws in the 1960s and 1970s required timber harvesting and ecosystem for conservation.
• The BLM manages more land than any other agency for grazing and mining.
• New laws required manage with input for the public.
• Roads, motorized transportation, cabins, bathrooms, and picnic shelters are forbidden.
• The National Wild and Scenic Rivers System includes parts of over 200 rivers covering over 2,500 miles.
• National lakeshores and national seashores preserve shorelines and islands.
• Governments work to protect aquatic life zones.
• Most countries have some form of protected area, for land surfaces.
• World Heritage site: an area with “outstanding value to humanity” established by a national government and recognized by the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO)
• The United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) has assembled a World Database on Protected Areas.

Limitations of Protected Areas

• Although important in protecting biodiversity, protected areas have their limits
• The ecological island effect consists of the negative effects on a population when its protected habitat is isolated amid wider unprotected habitat.
• The ecological pattern known as island biogeography describes the effects of the size and degree of isolation of a protected area.
• Larger areas host more species richness and can support more individuals with buffer zones surrounding protected areas to limit the most destructive human.
• Wildlife corridors are protected strips of land that allow migration.
• Some protected areas do not align with the types of habitats most needing protection.
• To minimize conflict, ranchers and herders are paid for any loss of livestock caused by a predator.
• Protection must be matched by enforcement against poaching, logging, and mining operations with a community-based conservation that involves local people through co-management with governments and ecotourism.
• Governments can acquire private property through eminent domain.
• In land trusts, nonprofit organizations can buy land for conservation for landowners can receive payments in exchange for protecting land or for the services the ecosystems provide.

Laws Protect Biodiversity

• The Migratory Bird Treaty Act of 1819 with over 800 species that are protected.
• The Marine Mammal Protection Act protects whales, dolphins, seals, and manatees.
• The Endangered Species Act (ESA; 1973) was passed with broad bipartisan support and illegal to harm endangered species.
• US Fish and Wildlife Service or National Marine Fisheries Service adds species and distinct populations to the ESA list and helps recovers in it's critical habitats
• Over 1,600 species have been listed as threatened or endangered.
• The ESA is criticised with agriculture and in construstion of mining.
• Regulations fall to the states, under the law for species protection.
• State laws can be important in recovering species not listed under the ESA.
• Australia’s Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Act (1999) lets the government protect threatened and endangered ecosystems and species.
• Many countries have with Trade in Endangered Species (CITES) and regulates trade bans capturing of endangered species.
• Convention on Biological Diversity: pass laws sustainable and equitable human use of ecosystem services

Reducing Biodiversity Loss

• Deforestation threatens countless species with extinction.
• Sustainable forest management attempts to manage forests for harvest and as ecosystems that keep their biodiversity,
• Forestry practices include cutting only small areas, leaving some living trees to reseed, leaving snags so more trees can survive.