ABSTRACT

Despite the bad press that generally followed the most recent occurrence of El Niño on November 1, 1997, the Italian News Channel (RAI) and the U.S. Sunday Report showed a marvel engendered by El Niño: the flowering of the Chilean desert. It is important to note this example, because it shows clearly why the insistence on largely unmanipulated (if not intact, pristine, or virgin) systems is so vital to the understanding of integrity and to life on Earth. A seemingly barren desert area in Chile, without a discernible complement of species in recent times, changed dramatically after El Niño. Because the latent biological processes specific to deserts were present there, the unusual rains brought by El Niño produced a wonderland of flowers and grasses, with all the accompanying complementary species of insects, such as bees, ants, butterflies, and an abundance of other species.