"Most forage fisheries," Ms. Naylor wrote "are either fully exploited to overexploited or are in the process of recovering from overexploitation".
Some environmentalists worry that having struggled for years to protect forests from overexploitation, demand for biofuels could undermine their efforts.And now for FrankentreethanolOne idea is to create new, fast-growing trees to address this problem, either through careful breeding or genetic modification.
Mr Esty raises an even more intriguing possibility: "Like in the American West a hundred years ago, when barbed wire helped establish rights and prevent overgrazing, information technology can help establish 'virtual barbed wire' that secures property rights and so prevents overexploitation of the commons".
It provided kerosene a substitute to whale oil in lamps, the main source of artificial light, as overexploitation had made it scarce and costly.
The history of the American west, for example, is one of overexploitation of limited water resources, mainly for the benefit of farmers, at huge cost to federal and state taxpayers and with severe environmental side-effects.Cowboys and IndiansThe classic account of water in the American west is Marc Reisner's book "Cadillac Desert".
However, overexploitation severely depleted this resource.
Significantly, the issue that popularized the environmental crisis was an issue of failed global resource management: the overexploitation of whales, which threatened certain species with extinction.
The city-states of ancient Greece created laws that governed forest harvesting some 2,300 years ago, and feudal European societies established hunting preserves, which limited game and timber harvesting to royalty, effectively preventing overexploitation, by 1000 ce.
Among the island's rare and endangered animals are Montserrat orioles (Icterus oberi), Montserrat galliwasps (Diploglossus montisserrati, a type of lizard), and "mountain chickens" (Leptodactylus fallax), large frogs found in the lowlands that were a traditional delicacy but were near extinction in the early 21st century because of habitat loss, overexploitation, and an introduced fungal disease.
Norwalk is known for its oysters, and, even though there were problems with overexploitation and pollution of the waters in the late 1960s and early '70s, today the oyster fisheries are again productive.
