Euglena : Ecosystem Engineers
In 1995 an extremophile, or organism that thrives in extreme environments, was discovered in the United States in a lake outside of Butte, Montana. The body of water where it lives, known as the Berkeley Pit, is a former open-pit copper mine that is slowly filling with groundwater that dissolves heavy metals like arsenic, cadmium, zinc, and aluminum from the mine’s 2,000-foot-deep surface; the dissolved metals mix with the water to form a toxic (poisonous) solution. The Berkeley Pit is the largest hazardous waste site targeted for cleanup in the United States. As 2.6 million gallons of groundwater seep into the pit every day, the toxic brew edges ever closer to spilling into the Clark Fork River, which makes its way to the Columbia River and out to the ocean, representing a massive-scale ecological threat to the fisheries and communities in these areas.
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