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Ecosystems Unraveling
Pull predators out of the mix, and a once lush green world turns into an ecological shop of horrors.
In 1986, near the confluence of Orinoco and Caroní rivers in east-central Venezuela, the gates finished closing on a huge hydroelectric dam. The rising waters flooded a tract of tropical forest as broad as the state of Connecticut, under a lake that came to be named Guri. Left poking above the surface of Lago Guri was an archipelago of hundreds of hilltop islands ranging in size and quality from quarter-hectare islets to sprawling 700-hectare semi-wildernesses. The disparities in size had created one critical distinction: All but the very biggest among them were too small for large predators. The birth of the Guri archipelago was the scientific windfall that ecologist John Terborgh had been awaiting.
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