Endangered Species Act of 1973The Endangered Species Act of 1973 (ESA or "The Act"; 16 U.S.C. § 1531 et seq.) is the primary law in the United States for protecting and conserving imperiled species. Designed to protect critically imperiled species from extinction as a "consequence of economic growth and development untempered by adequate concern and conservation", the ESA was signed into law by President Richard Nixon on December 28, 1973. The Supreme Court of the United States described it as "the most comprehensive legislation for the preservation of endangered species enacted by any nation".
VegetationVegetation is an assemblage of plant species and the ground cover they provide. It is a general term, without specific reference to particular taxa, life forms, structure, spatial extent, or any other specific botanical or geographic characteristics. It is broader than the term flora which refers to species composition. Perhaps the closest synonym is plant community, but vegetation can, and often does, refer to a wider range of spatial scales than that term does, including scales as large as the global.
Ecosystem collapseEcological collapse An ecosystem is considered collapsed when its unique biotic (characteristic biota) or abiotic features are lost from all previous occurrences. Ecosystem collapse causes ecological collapse within a system; essentially altering its stability, resilience, and diversity levels. It is, however, possible to reverse through careful restoration, and is thus not completely equivalent to species extinction.
The Third ChimpanzeeThe Third Chimpanzee: The Evolution and Future of the Human Animal is a 1991 book by academic and popular science author Jared Diamond, in which the author explores concepts relating to the animal origins of human behavior. The book follows a series of articles published by Diamond, a physiologist, examining the evidence and its interpretation in earlier treatments of the related species, including cultural characteristics or features often regarded as particularly unique to humans.
Forest inventoryForest inventory is the systematic collection of data and forest information for assessment or analysis. An estimate of the value and possible uses of timber is an important part of the broader information required to sustain ecosystems. When taking forest inventory the following are important things to measure and note: species, diameter at breast height (DBH), height, site quality, age, and defects. From the data collected one can calculate the number of trees per acre, the basal area, the volume of trees in an area, and the value of the timber.
BushmeatBushmeat is meat from wildlife species that are hunted for human consumption. Bushmeat represents a primary source of animal protein and a cash-earning commodity for inhabitants of humid tropical forest regions in Africa, Latin America and Asia. Bushmeat is an important food resource in poor, rural communities. The numbers of animals killed and traded as bushmeat in the 1990s in West and Central Africa were thought to be unsustainable. By 2005, commercial harvesting and trading of bushmeat was considered a threat to biodiversity.
African wild dogThe African wild dog (Lycaon pictus), also known as the painted dog or Cape hunting dog, is a wild canine native to sub-Saharan Africa. It is the largest wild canine in Africa, and the only extant member of the genus Lycaon, which is distinguished from Canis by dentition highly specialised for a hypercarnivorous diet, and by a lack of dewclaws. It's estimated that there are around 6,600 adults (including 1,400 mature individuals) living in 39 subpopulations that are all threatened by habitat fragmentation, human persecution, and outbreaks of disease.
LeopardThe leopard (Panthera pardus) is one of the five extant species in the genus Panthera. It has a pale yellowish to dark golden fur with dark spots grouped in rosettes. Its body is slender and muscular reaching a length of with a long tail and a shoulder height of . Males typically weigh , and females . The leopard was first described in 1758, and several subspecies were proposed in the 19th and 20th centuries. Today, eight subspecies are recognised in its wide range in Africa and Asia.
Kodaira vanishing theoremIn mathematics, the Kodaira vanishing theorem is a basic result of complex manifold theory and complex algebraic geometry, describing general conditions under which sheaf cohomology groups with indices q > 0 are automatically zero. The implications for the group with index q = 0 is usually that its dimension — the number of independent global sections — coincides with a holomorphic Euler characteristic that can be computed using the Hirzebruch–Riemann–Roch theorem.
BonoboThe bonobo (bəˈnoʊboʊ,_ˈbɒnəboʊ; Pan paniscus), also historically called the pygmy chimpanzee (less often the dwarf chimpanzee or gracile chimpanzee), is an endangered great ape and one of the two species making up the genus Pan (the other being the common chimpanzee, Pan troglodytes). While bonobos are, today, recognized as a distinct species in their own right, they were initially thought to be a subspecies of Pan troglodytes, due to the physical similarities between the two species.
