Biodiversity, defined by the World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF) as the different kinds of life found in an area, is in a state of crisis all across the world, with declines in the numbers of organisms and many species declared as at risk of extinction. All types are affected, from plants and fungi to large mammals, and there is a clear link to human activity being the cause.
Once they came down only at dark from the canyons. Now they trot out bold in daylight on sunlit pavement. Still, if you move close, they vanish fast into shadows under the freeway, blocks from the ocean. Up beyond the flammable mansions on over- built lots, where they once burrowed safe, gave birth to ravenous young. Now they watch under scaffolding swinging above sliding foundations. Near the homeless tarps, scattered fires.
Whether dazzlingly red, deep green or ghostly pale, the richness of a tropical forest provides butterflies with a diversity of habitats in which to communicate, camouflage and reproduce. As humans replace tropical forests with environments such as eucalyptus monocultures, however, those requirements are changing. In a plantation, the ecological backdrop is stripped bare and drab species do better. Being bland like your surroundings becomes an advantage.
It is home to 4,300 species, including many of the state's remaining manatees, whose large, paddle-tailed bodies graze slowly through the shallows. For decades, the lagoon has also been a destination for Florida's municipal sewage. State law long ago aimed to stop much of the flow from wastewater plants, but in practice continued to allow dumping during heavy rains. Residential septic tanks have kept leaching into the water, too. Over time, that pollution fed algae blooms that choked out the area's seagrass-manatees' main food source.
The extinction crisis is unprecedented in modern times, with over 500 bird species potentially vanishing due to habitat loss, increasing this number threefold from past centuries.
