But the shadow has fallen again. This time the problem is neither as concentrated nor as easily tackled as that of pesticides or pollution. This time the problem is the disappearance of nature itself.
Biodiversity loss is now lining up to be the greatest man-made crisis the world has ever known. Biologists call it the Sixth Great Extinction, or the Holocene extinction event, after our current geologic time period. (The five previous extinction events all came before the evolution of Homo sapiens, apparently triggered by a cataclysmic event or combination of events, such as a fall in sea level, an asteroid impact, volcanic activity.) Mass extinctions are different in kind from what specialists term “background” extinctions, the rare but regular loss of between one to ten species per decade. Two hundred and fifty million years ago, the most catastrophic, “the Great Dying” of the Permian age, wiped out over 90 percent of all species in the oceans and70 percent on land. It took tens of millions of years for life to recover.
The current extinction rates are alarming enough. Preeminent biologist E. O. Wilson believes we stand to lose half of all species by the end of this century. Of the 45,000 species evaluated in the 2008 Red List, issued by the International Union for Conservation of Nature, 17,000, or nearly forty percent, may vanish. Conservative estimates suggest that the extinction rate in the modern era has reached a hundred to a thousand times normal.
Climate change further exacerbates biodiversity loss, and each of these crises magnifies and intensifies the effects of the other. As the planet warms and dries in some areas, species are pushed out of niches they currently occupy. Some of them, including the emperor penguin in Antarctica and the polar bear in the Arctic, have nowhere to go. Worldwide, as water temperatures rise and ponds dry, exposing amphibians and their eggs to ultraviolet radiation and disease, a third of those species are threatened with extinction. As people burn forests for agriculture and grazing, as they replace native vegetation with mono-culture crops that discourage cloud formation, they alter the dynamic relationship between the earth’s surface and the atmosphere, initiating further drying and warming, and further species loss.
Why do species matter? Why worry if some go missing? Part of the answer lies in the relationships coming to light between creatures like the canyon coyotes and the chaparral birds. After the nineteenth century’s great age of biological collecting, when collectors filled museums to bursting with stuffed birds and pinned beetles, the twentieth and twenty-first centuries have proved to be an age of connecting. Biologists have begun to understand that nature is a chain of dominoes: If you pull one piece out, the whole thing falls down. Lose the animals, lose the ecosystems. Lose the ecosystems, game over.
This was the essential insight of conservation biology, a new scientific field launched with the determination to identify threats to ecosystems and to design the methods to deal with them. E. O. Wilson has called it “a discipline with a deadline.” The Society for Conservation Biology, founded in 1985, became one of the fastest-growing scientific organizations of its time, bringing together diverse specialties from ecology and population genetics to sustainable agriculture and forestry, revolutionizing the once sleepy field of natural history.
The tremendous variety of species held in wilderness areas, particularly the tropics, is our bank and lifeline, our agricultural and medical insurance policy. Three-quarters of the world’s food supply comes from twelve plant species, but those species are dependent on thousands of others: pollinators (insects, bats, birds), soil microbes, nitrogen-fixing bacteria, and fungi. The tropical rain forests contain a pool of genetic diversity for important food crops, a source for vital new strains that can be hybridized to fight pests and diseases. Botanists are combing the planet for wild ancestors of soybeans, tomatoes, hard wheat, and grapes, believed to contain valuable genes for drought tolerance and other characteristics, but much diversity has already been lost. Genetic engineering alone cannot replace what hundreds of millions of years of evolution have given us. Wild replacements for pineapples, pomegranates, olives, coffee, and other crops lie in biodiversity-rich areas that must be saved.
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33 Comments
Add CommentPerhaps Soule could have kept his cats indoors as they are not part of the ecosystem in the first place.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisSoule probably keeps his beasts inside. But I'm glad he didn't because his error led to further investigation and some pretty relevant data.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThe rub with the excellent concept of continent spanning corridors focused on core ecosystem and biodiversity reclamation and preservation is that in order to succeed they will need to be largely human free zones. Imagine that.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this@slywy
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisWell, that rather thoroughly misses the point, don't you think?
Yet another reason people should live in domed cities and let nature be for a while. Or perhaps keep nature safe and move it to the moon. Or perhaps just move people to the moon. Or perhaps just the smart and good looking ones, and zap all the rest from space with a big laser.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisOr perhaps an airborne virus that quietly spreads among humans that simply sterilizes everyone. The only survivors after a generation winds down, being the small, self-contained, insular tribes in remote regions.
...which we could monitor with a laser from the moon!
Seriously though, some scientists will eventually step up to the plate and whip up a batch of that virus, for the good of the species, and of life itself. A species smart enough to overcome its obstacles and the balance of life, but too dumb to exercise self-control and destroy the balance of life, needs to make it's own obstacles and find balance yet again if it's going to survive.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thishotblack, I couldn't agree with anyone more. What the earth and all other species needs is to be rid of man.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisA lot of commentors here are assuming that it is man that must go. Mankind is of this earth weather you are a evolutionist or a theologist, maybe just maybe mankind as a species is to evolve to have dominian over all species. by the way my crappy spelling does not diminish the point.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisHuman beings are animals just like any other. We belong here just as much as other animals do. There are clues within the article to what we need to do to make our presence here on Earth less destructive. Can you find them?
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisHere's a hint. One thing we need to do is eliminate totalitarian agriculture. While it is a normal variation for human beings to practice a hunter-gardener lifestyle, the kind of agriculture which has become ascendant in the world is NOT a normal variation and in fact has been causing desertification and extinctions since we first developed it. The Agricultural Revolution should have been called The Agricultural Armageddon, as far as the rest of the planet is concerned.
There is a nascent *human* rewilding movement going on in the U.S. and perhaps elsewhere in the Western world. It is worth greater attention. Because if we think we can keep on living the way we are and *not* kill ourselves off, and most of the biosphere with us, we're kidding ourselves.
When will the environmental movement become brave enough to use the phrase "population control" in their proposed solutions to all our problems?
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI watch advancing subdivision of rural land and absentee ownership by corporate and wealthy selfish individuals radically change our traditional way of life and yet there are more demands to lock up & burn our forests and limit multiple use of our public land and prevent utilization our natural resources -- mining, timber & grazing.
How is a growing population that expects a higher standard of living with more leisure time going to be fed and clothed and "return to nature" at the same time? Stop and think about it! Safeway & Walmart are not the source of all our essentials.
It's unlikely that any politician will ever back population control...it's just not going to get them the votes. I remember seeing a story about something called "plumpynut" some group made to give starving children the nourishment they need to make it through lean times - without apparently understanding that starvation (along with disease) are the two primary biological means of maintaining population balance. The thousands that might die now are horribly sad, but still less than the tens of thousands that will die when those saved grow up, have children, and then face a more dire lack of resources.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisYes, Humans -are- animals...but we've done everything we can to circumvent the natural systems that limit our growth. In so doing we've temporarily exempted ourselves from the "normal" equations that govern the rest of the animals.
Our lack of foresight will bite us in the end - it has to - if we can't put the breaks on nature -will- do it for us. How disruptive and painful this is is in direct proportion to our ability to start limiting our population responsibly.
If we can't stop being selfish and begin to awaken our responsibility as stewards of the natural world around us, the systems that clean our air and water and provide for our needs, we're doomed. The true tragedy there is that we'll burn the house down before we go.
It's unlikely that any politician will ever back population control...it's just not going to get them the votes. I remember seeing a story about something called "plumpynut" some group made to give starving children the nourishment they need to make it through lean times - without apparently understanding that starvation (along with disease) are the two primary biological means of maintaining population balance. The thousands that might die now are horribly sad, but still less than the tens of thousands that will die when those saved grow up, have children, and then face a more dire lack of resources.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisYes, Humans -are- animals...but we've done everything we can to circumvent the natural systems that limit our growth. In so doing we've temporarily exempted ourselves from the "normal" equations that govern the rest of the animals.
Our lack of foresight will bite us in the end - it has to - if we can't put the breaks on nature -will- do it for us. How disruptive and painful this is is in direct proportion to our ability to start limiting our population responsibly.
If we can't stop being selfish and begin to awaken our responsibility as stewards of the natural world around us, the systems that clean our air and water and provide for our needs, we're doomed. The true tragedy there is that we'll burn the house down before we go.
It's unlikely that any politician will ever back population control...it's just not going to get them the votes. I remember seeing a story about something called "plumpynut" some group made to give starving children the nourishment they need to make it through lean times - without apparently understanding that starvation (along with disease) are the two primary biological means of maintaining population balance. The thousands that might die now are horribly sad, but still less than the tens of thousands that will die when those saved grow up, have children, and then face a more dire lack of resources.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisYes, Humans -are- animals...but we've done everything we can to circumvent the natural systems that limit our growth. In so doing we've temporarily exempted ourselves from the "normal" equations that govern the rest of the animals.
Our lack of foresight will bite us in the end - it has to - if we can't put the breaks on nature -will- do it for us. How disruptive and painful this is is in direct proportion to our ability to start limiting our population responsibly.
If we can't stop being selfish and begin to awaken our responsibility as stewards of the natural world around us, the systems that clean our air and water and provide for our needs, we're doomed. The true tragedy there is that we'll burn the house down before we go.
It's unlikely that any politician will ever back population control...it's just not going to get them the votes. I remember seeing a story about something called "plumpynut" some group made to give starving children the nourishment they need to make it through lean times - without apparently understanding that starvation (along with disease) are the two primary biological means of maintaining population balance. The thousands that might die now are horribly sad, but still less than the tens of thousands that will die when those saved grow up, have children, and then face a more dire lack of resources.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisYes, Humans -are- animals...but we've done everything we can to circumvent the natural systems that limit our growth. In so doing we've temporarily exempted ourselves from the "normal" equations that govern the rest of the animals.
Our lack of foresight will bite us in the end - it has to - if we can't put the breaks on nature -will- do it for us. How disruptive and painful this is is in direct proportion to our ability to start limiting our population responsibly.
If we can't stop being selfish and begin to awaken our responsibility as stewards of the natural world around us, the systems that clean our air and water and provide for our needs, we're doomed. The true tragedy there is that we'll burn the house down before we go.
stew..but who will inherit the earth...
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisYes, it was quite obviously Soules cats that have destroyed bio-diversity worldwide. How clever of you to point that out. Bravo ! have a chocolate soldier !
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisCats
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThat's about half a dozen, in all, then - by the time we've finished ?
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThat's just what I see, Mr. prophet. It reminds me of the time a schoolfriend sitting pillion on the back of our soap-box, lacerated his fingers attempting to stop the lift-off because he felt sure it would avoid worse later. I belive this is a tiny analogy of the global whatever-it-is. Ironically, He does not appeart to have "seen it" yet, engrossed as he is in his own games and survival - and piano, on which he is second to a very finite number, I would say !
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisAccessibility Login Test
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisnot necessarily. humans lived in wilderness for a hundred thousand years without destroying it. in fact, as it turns out most of what we call "wilderness" and "wild" lands that europeans found in the new world were actually human-influenced gardens not incompatible with an enlightened idea of wilderness.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thiswe have to watch that this doesn't become an excuse for further destruction, but i believe it is absolutely crucial to the survival of both humans and the rest of nature to re-establish some form of this relationship (modified by population reality and recognition of the push of technology.)
mtrancher,
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisso many mistakes... so little space to answer
"wealthy selfish individuals..." you cite problems of consumption but say population control is the solution. huh?
stop projecting.
the only way your solutions will solve those problems is if you plan to go around sterilizing rich people. (probably have to be at gunpoint so thank god for misreadings of the second amendment.)
the people in china and india who are demanding better lives have a tiny impact per person on nature compared to the average u.s. white person. THEY aren't demanding more nature; we who have sacrificed it for stuff are. 2 different parts of the world and the problem. different psychological responses are called for but mostly the same solutions. see below.
because of the only class war going on--the assault on the poor and middle class by the rich--leisure time is disappearing for most, including the third world slightly-less-poor. and the only way most people here keep their leisure time is by not sleeping enough.
preventing "utilization" (aka rape of the land) is exactly what we need to do to survive, and where one use is incompatible with others, as most of the ones you mentioned are (the way we do them), it must be stopped. there is no natural right to mine, log and graze. Vegetarianism (in most areas, not all), renewables, efficiency and clean energy, local organic permaculture, biking, walking, train-ing, biomimicry are just a few of the ways to not make this about population. because it's not. it's about consumption by the richest. which you apparently realize.
but not really. or....? huh? i'm confused. i think you are too.
i so much agree with DANA1974 and yes there are more people doing rewilding in the rest of the world i am one of them doing something small scale in Wales UK Europe this rewilding i do on ex agricultural fields since December 2002
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisRemediation for the few species that attract human interest is well and good, but it's obscene to suggest that this approach, its foreseeable extensions, will ameliorate "6th extinction", affecting as it has, everything else - from hundreds of thousands of known insect species (per Wilson) to billions of species of microorgansims (per Venter) - the bulk of terrestrial wealth. Relative to this, re-wilding is down in the noise.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThank you for sch a heartening and encouraging positive news item.. when there seems to be so much gloom.... about the environment ! T
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThank you for a heartening, good-new item... I just hope that these efforts continue to grow .... What happened to the
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thissensible UN discussions/studies in the 70's overpopulation.... and the 80's saying about living lightly on the earth so that others may live.... ?
Re-wilding is an excellent avenue for resource management and in fact is a continuation of a process that naturally has been going on persistantly since the very beginning and has only been interrupted with the widespread occupation of the land by humans and their activities.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisContrary to the notion that many have; that the planet is already crowded with humans and their demands, the planet is in fact in possession of plenty of potential habitat that is barely used and which has, for a number of reasons, been relieved of its full inventory of large and keystone species which cannot currently make their way into these eco-regions. We can nurture this process and reap great benefits from the increased productivity of increased complexity in natural systems which ultimately provide us with the very services on which we depend. We need not be working against the expansion of natural diversity at every step but our impacts, disruptions and demands can actually enhance and exercise our natural system's propensity to organically expand and utilize whatever curveball nature, or man, throws at it, but it is essential in the short run (human history) that we recognize what we're doing and what the overall potential can be.
You all seem like nice folks but don't understand the severity of the climate change and the current impacts. I live rural near a city called Tehachapi, CA. We're where the Tehachapi Mts meet the Sierras. Another wind farm was approved this month - 9400 acres & 320 turbines. Sounds good, huh? The endangered California condor has been sighted. It's one of the places they were released. These birds were down to 11 at the low point. This is virgin land where the wildlife is still plentiful. The approved mitigation was to phase out sheep grazing, so if a sheep dies on the range a condor won't be flying down for a meal. Duh! Like that is the only ground animal that dies or species of bird that will get hit. I can see at least 120 turbines from our property. We have no birds except scavengers. Between the turbines, freeway, train tracks and barbed wire, man and greed has allowed more fragmentation of habitats. In 6 years, I've never even seen a deer or birds of prey in the sky. Look in the sky. Not many birds up there anymore. The same for bees and wildlife.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisA site that I recommend is uctv.tv , Click on Science then Global Warming. Please, take the time to watch the lectures. These men and women are the experts. As science moves forward theories will change. What HAS to change immediately is our encroachment. The corporations and our elected officals are at the point where they're making decisions based on profits and taxes. So careless.
Personally, I'm becoming uncomforable with the global corporations, politicians and supreme court justices. There is a reality. I'm in farm country. All the way up the coast of Calif. alot of us had problems with crops or gardens. My tomatoes didn't ripen till Oct/Nov. There weren't enough warm days, is the reason. I've done a fair am't of research on what is happening. In 2007, when wind/solar energy got its push, in the same year, Kern County rezoned agricultral land to industrial, commercial, WE and residential. Urban sprawl. It's all about money. It has to stop. Ft Irwin has relocated Mojave desert tortoises 3 times. The first 2 were disasters. A solar plant draft report allow for tortoises to be moved and burros removed. One voice one people. None of us should continue to be silent. My fear is that I'll have hunger at my doorstep and have water privatized and rationed...so the rich get richer?
The problem with condor extinction is not windmills. The reason there were only 11 is the rampant development of wilderness areas, and even more, pollution, especially from oil and coal extraction and use, pesticides and chemical fertilizers, war and industry. Our use of fossil fuels and nuclear energy, and the industrial and agricultural practices that depend on them, have caused millions of times the damage solar and wind will ever cause. The visible items you mention are not nearly as important destroyers of wilderness as pollution from the way we live. I share your concerns about wilderness encroachment and other ecological and social problems, but none of them is as serious and urgent as climate catastrophe. If you care about the natural world, support wind, solar, efficiency, organic permaculture, and reforestation here and in the third world, and use less energy and toxic stuff yourself. We need all the tools we have; rewilding is a necessary but tiny one.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisIf you don't understand climate catastrophe, find out more. The science--the same science that's probably saved the condors for now--is clear, and becomes more certain every week, month and year. This nonsense about not enough warm days is either lies or local variation (weather, not climate) and does not change the facts: Climate catastrophe is real, happening, and if left unchecked, will not only cause immense ecological destruction and social chaos and tyranny, it will end civilization.
Evolution has taken billions of years to create the diversity of nature. The worldwide reason for justifying the forthcoming mass extictions is : 'All this talk of saving wildlife is very well but I have to feed my family'.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisMan's attempts at creating technology to mimic natural systems is to be perfectly honest pathetic both in terms of artificial intelligence and robotics.
The easy solution is to protect biodiversity is by feeding the poor and punishing the rich so that we won't be condemned to forever failing to copy what nature has given us free.
mtrancher,
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisMaybe when population problems are actually the problem. If that ever happens, which is unlikely. Right now the only growing part of the US population is immigrants, who come here because US overconsumption and the imperialistic corporate policies here and abroad that go with that overconsumption destroy their rural and urban economies. The stay-at-home part of our population is about at replacement rate or ZPG. When you watch the effects of increasing consumption you mentioned, what you're watching is the effects of increasing consumption. Not population growth.
And I think that because of corporate control of our economy everybody stopped expecting more leisure time about 30 years ago. No one has more leisure now except the richest 1% and the other growing part of the population--the unemployed.
You all missed the obvious answer.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisIt is only in these past two centuries that artificial became the dominant form of life.
There are natives worldwide who already practice and have practiced for ages, maintaining the natural balance of life. They didn't dominate nature, they lived with nature, where ever they were. Nothing was considered unimportant or worthless.
"Take only what you need and leave the land as you found it."
Ever notice that every great civilization and their great cities, fail and are abandoned? Some by war, by others for no obvious reason. The larger the city the sooner it fails.
Only the ruins remain.
Yet small villages last forever!
Will we follow suit? Are we on the same path of destruction?
For us our weakness is our dependence on science to answer all our needs.
It was arrogance and blind faith in science as being superior to learning passed down from generation to generation that set the stage for the possible coming destruction. I say possible because we can turn things back around. Species do recover, given the chance.
We are only now understanding that we humans can't live on artificial food, drugs and air. Depleted land and water can't be restored artificially. Adding more fertilizer doesn't make the land more produce more and better plants, it's not enough. The rich, fertile American soil was produced and maintained by 60 million roaming buffalo and other wildlife.
It was not created by Monsanto labs. Abundant salmon comes from the sea, not fish farms offshore. The wild fish are disease free, while the farmed fish is not and can contaminate the wild fish.
We don't get it, but perhaps this new generation just might in time.
Our ancestors knew the answers, maybe we will listen to them and learn instead of regarding their knowledge as superstition, naive and inherently inferior to our newly acquired book learning.
Over time I have found that the things my Tennessee born grandfather taught me as a child, were true. They had to be for his family to survive back in the 19th century.
All life is connected, what affects one affects all.
The evidence is there but will we wake up in time to change things?
I wish the author could avoid the breezy, superficial tone, as if she was trying to sell us something, breathlessly enumerating all the wonderful benefits and incalculable steps forward already taken.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThe statistics about protected areas, for example, are nonsense: the phenomenon of "paper parks" (which the author mentions but downplays) are much more ubiquitous than she seems to realize.
The amateurish boosterism here makes the real issues of extinction easier to ignore.
Why not address the original and much more radical use of the term "rewilding" by Pleistocene extinction expert Paul S. Martin: breed 'lost cause' keystone fauna in areas not under threat. Restore the elephant to the Americas, along with the lion and cheetah. Bring the gorilla to South America. Give the truly magnificent animals a real chance to not go extinct in our lifetimes.