Alan Rabinowitz is a director of the Wildlife Conservation Society, and is often referred to as the 'Indiana Jones' of wildlife conservation. He is featured on a video that I will be showing in part in class on Monday, and as I was researching the topic to present it to students, I learned quite a few things about Dr. Rabinowitz that I did not know. Students will be given an excerpt from this New York Times article, but Dr. Rabinowitz's interests are also surprisingly well-summarized in this interview from The Colbert Report.
| The Colbert Report | Mon - Thurs 11:30pm / 10:30c | |||
| Alan Rabinowitz | ||||
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Dr. Rabinowitz refers to the concept of the 'balance of nature' and also briefly addresses the question of whether or not extinction is normal. These dovetail very nicely with some of the Ecology standards that are all students are supposed to understand:
6) Stability in an ecosystem is a balance between competing effects. As a basis for understanding this concept:
a. Students know bio diversity is the sum total of different kinds of organisms and is affected by alterations of habitats.
b. Students know how to analyze changes in an ecosystem resulting from changes in climate, human activity, introduction of nonnative species, or changes in population size.
c. Students know a vital part of an ecosystem is the stability of its producers and decomposers.
e. Students know at each link in a food web some energy is stored in newly made structures but much energy is dissipated into the environment as heat. This dissipation may be represented in an energy pyramid.
ALAN RABINOWITZ
6) Stability in an ecosystem is a balance between competing effects. As a basis for understanding this concept:
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