Introduction - Mountains and Plains: The Ecology of Wyoming Landscapes - page 11

fossil fuels, the value of ecosystem services is estimated
at trillions of dollars per year. 6 the Farm Bill of 2008,
passed by congress, called for measuring the environ-
mental benefits gained from managing farm and ranch
lands more carefully.
considering their value, it should not be surprising
that some ecological services now can be bought and
sold, thereby creating opportunities for landowners,
businesses, consumers, and governments to become
more directly involved with supporting sustainable
resource management. An example is the buying and
selling of carbon credits as a means of reducing car-
bon dioxide emissions to the atmosphere, a major
contributor to global climate change. Similarly, the
conservation Reserve Program of the U.S. Department
of Agriculture provides monetary incentives for farm-
ers to establish perennial plant cover on erodible land,
thereby enabling carbon sequestration as well as soil
stabilization and water purification—powered by solar
energy rather than fossil fuels. other examples are dis-
cussed in chapter 18.

Fig. 1.9. the Wyoming toad ( Anaxyrus baxteri ), less than 2.5
inches long, is found nowhere else except in an area of about
2 square miles in the Laramie Basin. it has been raised suc-
cessfully in captivity, but there are currently only thirty to
a hundred individuals living in the toad's native habitat. it
is protected by the endangered Species Act. Photo by Sarah
Armstrong.

ecosystem services generally have been undervalued
or overlooked, leading to inevitable and undesirable
consequences. their value becomes clear when the costs
are summed for the time, labor, and energy required for
water purification, herbicides, insecticides, fertilizer,
and the control of soil erosion. When economists cal-
culate all the costs of replacing such services with mod-
ern technology, much of which requires the burning of

in sum, whereas ecologists study adaptations, popu-
lations, communities, and ecosystems, conservation
biologists strive to develop strategies for conserving our
evolutionary heritage. And now, a newly emerging mul-
tidisciplinary group of professionals seeks to identify
and profit from investments in maintaining ecosystem
services.