The two-volume report, Status and Trends of the Nation's Biological Resources, was presented today at the S. Dillon Ripley Center in the Smithsonian Institution in an event sponsored by the U.S. Geological Survey, the National Marine Fisheries Service, the Smithsonian Institute for Conservation Biology, and the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy. The report was produced by the U.S. Geological Survey with contributions from nearly 200 experts from federal government, academic and nongovernmental communities, including a section on marine resources written by the National Marine Fisheries Service. It synthesizes current information on status and trends of biological resources with a historical perspective of ecosystems across the country to assess how the nation's resources are changing. The report also covers the major factors that affect biological resources nationwide. The report, said Groat, documents that the major land-use changes negatively affecting the health of biological resources are urbanization, conversion of lands to agriculture, draining of wetlands and the fragmentation of forests.
Losses are due to agriculture, grazing, urbanization and mineral extraction.
The result is that native grassland bird species have shown more consistent, widespread and steeper declines than any other group of North American birds. Likewise, he said, the report details how changes in the nation's waterways to accommodate navigation, irrigation, hydroelectric power generation and municipal use have drastically altered the biological integrity of aquatic environments. The result, he said, is that aquatic organisms dominate lists of imperiled species. Particularly dramatic examples of the imperilment of aquatic systems occur in the Southeast and the Southwest, Groat said. In the Southeast, where as many as 144 major reservoirs have been built, the effects of these dams on the wealth of aquatic biodiversity are dramatic 19 percent of the freshwater fish species are threatened or endangered, and 73 percent of the freshwater mussels are at risk.