If renewable resources are harvested at a rate greater than
their regeneration rate, the long-term flow of benefits is
reduced, and they are said to be overharvested. When natural
capital is drawn down too far, fundamental ecosystem changes can
occur which make ecosystem recovery to full service delivery
potential very slow or impossible, and degradation is said to
have occurred. Degraded ecosystems support half or less of the
biodiversity of non-degraded used ecosystems. overharvesting is
the unintended side effect of activities aimed at harvesting
just one or a few components of the ecosystem. The discarded
“bycatch” in fisheries and the habitat destruction caused by
logging are examples of this. Regulatory policies that pay no
heed to anything other than the target species encourage this
kind of damage. is a problem in many localities. For example,
about 9 percent of rangelands south of the equator are grazed by
domestic livestock at unsustainable rates. The fish stocks in
the Great Lakes (Lake Victoria in