PPRP and Biodiversity in Maryland

"It is interesting to contemplate a tangled bank, clothed with many plants of many kinds, with birds singing on the bushes, with various insects flitting about, and with worms crawling through the damp earth, and to reflect that these elaborately constructed forms, so different from each other, and dependent upon each other in so complex a manner, have all been produced by laws acting around us…growth and reproduction…inheritance…variability…a ratio of increase so high as to lead to a struggle for life."

---Charles Darwin, 1859

The conservation of biological diversity is now recognized as an important issue in the United States and around the world. In Maryland, the Department of Natural Resources has embraced biodiversity as a critical focus for managing its natural resources and sustaining the Chesapeake Bay ecosystem. The Services and Programs of the Department are working together to support the outcomes and initiatives of the Ecosystem Council on understanding and protecting biodiversity in Maryland. In particular, the Power Plant Research Program (PPRP) is conducting a research initiative to address the potential impacts on biodiversity of power generation and transmission, and to facilitate improved biodiversity management and restoration activities by electric utilities.

• What Is Biodiversity and Why Is It Important?
• PPRP Biodiversity Initiatives
• Other Biodiversity Sites on the Web