Tags · ecology

ecology

  1. Mast

    A warden of a valley whose chestnuts flower only every fourth, fifth or sixth year — a founders' trick to starve the weevil — watches an assessor's offer of steady annual harvests in one district seed the pest that ruins the next great crop.

  2. Arrears

    A colony's fourth Censor keeps the Ledger that tracks extinction debt owed after clearing a forest — a number the species-area curve gets right decade after decade, even as politicians demand to know which living thing on it is condemned.