Wealth Beyond Measure: A Review of Precious Heritage, The Status of Biodiversity in the United States.

• Author: Blaustein, Richard J.

Precious Heritage: The Status of Biodiversity in the United States (Precious Heritage) (1) is a skillfully written and visually appealing book that calls on the American people to fully appreciate the rich, but threatened, biodiversity of the United States. Under the joint direction of The Nature Conservancy and the Association for Biodiversity Information, the twenty-six contributors to Precious Heritage survey and describe America's biodiversity and discuss the serious stresses this rich heritage is undergoing. After many chapters dedicated to this thorough exposition, Precious Heritage culminates its American journey by offering concrete suggestions for safeguarding the natural heritage that is described and beautifully photographed throughout this valuable book.

The concept of biodiversity premised in Precious Heritage includes not only the components of biodiversity--genes, species, ecosystems, and landscapes--but also the sustaining and changing processes that form the context for the relations and historical placement of these four components. As the book's three editors (Bruce A. Stein, Lynn S. Kutner, and Jonathan S. Adams) write in the first chapter: "The concept of biodiversity includes both the variety of these four things and the variability found within and among them. Biodiversity also encompasses the processes--both ecological and evolutionary--that allow life on Earth to continue adapting and evolving." (2) Although evolutionary processes are always foreground in the context of biodiversity, in the American popular and academic culture the broader units of landscape and ecosystem have particularly strong evocations--landscapes are America's treasured vistas and horizons, and the United States ecosystems are valued for their extraordinary variety. The editors point out that "[o]f the 14 biome types worldwide that represent major ecosystem groups the United States contains 12, more than any other country." (3)

Notwithstanding the illustrative sections devoted to ecosystems and landscapes, Precious Heritage emphasizes the preeminent importance of collecting information on species as a way of understanding U.S. biodiversity, "[f]or only through identifying and characterizing species and assigning the scientific names that become our biological lingua franca can we make sense out of the patterns of biodiversity that play out across the landscape." (4) Unfortunately, the process of identifying species in the United States often encounters difficulties beyond even those expected for so large a task, as several regions have yielded incomplete biodiversity understandings either because of size, or because of private landowners' resistance to surveys. (5) Still, the American taxonomic endeavor has a rich tradition dating all the way back to the colonial days. This tradition continues both as a resource and as an invaluable inspiration. For example, taxonomic classifications serve as an underpinning to prominent conservation laws such as the Endangered Species Act. (6) The tradition demonstrates an American ethic ready to be summoned in the effort to explore and document our biodiversity.

Chapter Three, entitled A Remarkable Array: Species Diversity in the United States, is an especially illuminating chapter...