With all we know, we still know too little to reliably re-engineer ecosystems

NPR Morning Edition “Saving One Species At The Expense Of Another”

There are a number of really important points made by this nice short. The first is that scientists — even when acting carefully on the best available evidence and theory — can still fail to produce desired outcomes. The second is that modifying ecological communities is a tricky business, because every change brings about a cascade of additional changes. Compensating for habitat destruction rather than reversing it outright is unlikely to restore the original ecological community. And so we must — as the article suggests — make choices.