Aleph Null
02-05-2005, 04:27 PM
http://apnews.myway.com/article/20050204/D881T4KG0.html
Book: Ariz. Mountains Face Endangerment
Feb 4, 2:51 PM (ET)
TUCSON, Ariz. (AP) - Some Southern Arizona mountains were placed on a short list of places around the world where biological resources are at risk.
A new book called "Hotspots Revisited" counts the Madrean Sky Islands - including Mount Lemmon and Mount Graham - among 34 places facing environmental threats.
The 40 sky islands in Arizona and New Mexico belong to a larger biological community of Madrean pine-oak woodlands that includes Mexico's main mountain chains, isolated mountaintops in Baja California and part of Big Bend National Park in Texas, the authors said. Together, they are home to 5,300 flowering plant species - 4,000 of which grow nowhere else.
But the area also faces environmental harm from logging and large-scale burns to clear the land for farming and cattle, scientists who contributed to the assessment say.
"Those of us who work here have known for a long time that this was a pretty unique and special place," said David Hodges, director of the Tucson-based nonprofit Sky Island Alliance. "Part of our job has been selling to the larger world I that it should be a priority for conservation and protection."
Arizona's sky islands are diverse because they are where four major biological landscape meet: the Sonoran and Chihuahuan deserts, the Rocky Mountains and the Sierra Madre.
"You combine all the flora and fauna along with I the many life zones. You just find hundreds and hundreds of different habitat situations," Hodges said.
Book: Ariz. Mountains Face Endangerment
Feb 4, 2:51 PM (ET)
TUCSON, Ariz. (AP) - Some Southern Arizona mountains were placed on a short list of places around the world where biological resources are at risk.
A new book called "Hotspots Revisited" counts the Madrean Sky Islands - including Mount Lemmon and Mount Graham - among 34 places facing environmental threats.
The 40 sky islands in Arizona and New Mexico belong to a larger biological community of Madrean pine-oak woodlands that includes Mexico's main mountain chains, isolated mountaintops in Baja California and part of Big Bend National Park in Texas, the authors said. Together, they are home to 5,300 flowering plant species - 4,000 of which grow nowhere else.
But the area also faces environmental harm from logging and large-scale burns to clear the land for farming and cattle, scientists who contributed to the assessment say.
"Those of us who work here have known for a long time that this was a pretty unique and special place," said David Hodges, director of the Tucson-based nonprofit Sky Island Alliance. "Part of our job has been selling to the larger world I that it should be a priority for conservation and protection."
Arizona's sky islands are diverse because they are where four major biological landscape meet: the Sonoran and Chihuahuan deserts, the Rocky Mountains and the Sierra Madre.
"You combine all the flora and fauna along with I the many life zones. You just find hundreds and hundreds of different habitat situations," Hodges said.