There’s a million reasons why we need to act now

LAST week the United Nations published a gloomy report on the state of the world’s wildlife. To coincide with this the BBC broadcast Extinction The Facts presented by David Attenborough. The key message in both was that every group of species, whether mammals, birds, insects, reptiles and much else, in the sea and on the land, is declining both in numbers and range. The headline was that ‘‘a million species’’ are at risk.

The process of evolution takes a species from evolving, to becoming established, then more and more narrowly specialised before going extinct. This normally takes a long, time, perhaps millions of years. Now it is estimated that extinction is happening 100 times faster than it would naturally.

The consequences if we cannot reverse this trend are far reaching. Like all species we entirely depend on the others for our own survival and well-being. A simple example is our food. A third of all the plants that we eat are insect pollinated and just keeping bees will not do the job. Wild insects are absolutely vital, but they are declining all over the world. Domesticated honeybees can even outcompete their wild relatives and hasten their demise. Others major factors include pollution, soil degradation, poaching wild animals for products such as pangolin scales and rhino horn, over-fishing, climate change, and worst of all just now habitat loss. Much of this is a consequence not only of the number of people in the world, but of their unsustainable consumption of nature’s bounty. We act as if this is infinite, but in reality it is not. Covid-19 has shown us in the starkest terms how vulnerable we are when natural processes go against us. Ironically, we have it within our power to halt and even reverse the declines.

We know what to do but lack the political will to push through the policies. Taking environmental, social and economic factors into account we need to change from maximising to optimising production and consumption in all areas.

This is not about conserving nature but about conserving life. We may be in the last chance saloon. If we do not take effective action to help nature to help us the future is indeed gloomy. As Joni Michell sang ‘…you don’t know what you’ve got ‘til it’s gone.’

Peter Shirley is a West Midlandbased conservationist