Earth today is not the planet of our grandparents or even our parents. Earth’s human population is 8 billion and growing. We, meaning humanity, MUST find ways to change our behavior and lifestyles. Specifically, we must significantly reduce our production needs and our humungous consumption rates. Otherwise, eventually, there will not be anything left. I know what you’re thinking. You probably think I am a lunatic alarmist making up all this BS. If you do not want to SEE with your own eyes or if you prefer to live in your own sheltered little world and shut out real information about what is happening around the world because you think it’s fake news, there is probably little I can say ordo to change your mind. Personally, I do not believe that millions of scientists around the world could all be wrong about climate change. However, to the people who do acknowledge what is happening to our precious wildlife on Earth, and to us, YOU HAVE THE MOST WORK TO DO. We cannot sit idly by and merely sympathize, give lip service, or feel helpless. We must act, and we need hundreds of millions or even billions of people to do the same to change our world.
EXTINCTION IS A VERY SCARY WORD. It refers to “the dying out or extermination of a species.” Extinction means that a species is forever gone. Humans have been mainly responsible for the extinction of many species because of overharvesting, hunting, introduction of invasive species, pollution, and conversion of wetlands, forests, and other natural areas to make room for farming, which destroys the natural habitat of many animals. According to the World Wildlife Fund (the “WWF”) and the Zoological Society of London (the “ZSL”), wildlife populations on Earth have decreased by almost 70% between 1970 and 2018, which is less than 50 years!
You may ask: don’t we already have laws that protect animals? The answer is a qualified “yes,” and it is called the Endangered Species Act (the “ESA”). BUT – the ESA has become weighed down by so much political inaction, red tape, and delays, that the intended protection of the ESA happens too late, or sometimes not at all. Long delays in listing a species in the ESA as endangered or threatened often render the intended protection useless when populations have become so small that a species will struggle to recover even with the listed protection. It is also apparent that endangered species are not a high priority with our government and many other governments because of a consistent lack of funding. One study indicates that since the ESA was passed in 1973, only 54 species in the United States have fully recovered.
Latin America, including the Amazon, has had a 94% drop in average wildlife population size in the last 48 years, which is likely the worst decline on Earth. This makes sense when you think about how much of the Amazon rain forest, which is such a unique ecosystem, has been deforested, destroyed, burnt out, stripped, and cultivated by humans for food production. Once this habitat is gone, what happens to the wildlife depending on the rain forest? Where can they go? It’s not only Latin America. This is happening all over the world. Africa had a 66% drop; Asia and the Pacific had a 55% drop, North America had a 20% drop, and Europe and Central Asia had an 18% drop. “The total loss is akin to the human populations of Europe, the Americas, Africa, Oceania and China disappearing, according to the report.”
The Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (the “IPBES”), established in 2012, is an international organization committed to strengthening the role of science in public decision-making on biodiversity and ecosystem services. The IPBES prepared a first report in 2019 (the link below will take you to the report). A few of the numerous conclusions in the report were that: (1) around the globe, nature has been significantly altered by humans; (2) 75% of Earth’s land surface has been significantly altered; (3) 85% of wetland areas have been lost; (4) between 2010 and 2015 almost 80 million acres of primary or recovering forest was lost; (5) possibly 1 million species already face extinction, many within decades, and; unless we start taking immediate action to reduce or stop the causes of all these catastrophic losses, the global rate of extinction will further accelerate. The report also notes that the current rate of extinction “is already at least tens to hundreds of times higher than it has averaged over the past 10 million years.” THAT IS FOOD FOR THOUGHT!
WATCH FOR OUR NEXT ARTICLES ON EXTINCTION AND ENDANGERED SPECIES as we take a deeper dive into some specific species and locations, statistics, and developments.
References:
https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/technology/extinction-crisis-puts-1-million-species-on-the-brink/ar-AA15BGHy
https://wwf.panda.org/discover/our_focus/biodiversity/threatsto_biodiversity/
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2022/oct/12/us-endangered-species-act-poor-resources-study?CMP=oth_b-aplnews_d-1
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2022/oct/13/almost-70-of-animal-populations-wiped-out-since-1970-report-reveals-aoe
https://www.britannica.com>science
https://www.nbcnews.com/science/environment/endangered-species-protections-kick-late-study-finds-rcna51966tec
https://ipbes.net/sites/default/files/202002/ipbes_global_assessment_report_summary_for_policymakers_en.pdf
