UN report weaves together perils facing all creatures
In Mongolia, where Denver Zoo has worked to reduce human-wildlife conflict and protect native species for more than 20 years, our Field Conservation team does a simple exercise with local community members to demonstrate the connectivity of ecosystems. We give each participant a photo of a native plant or animal species and wrap a long string connecting each person, creating a web. Then we remove a plant or animal from the web one by one, and they drop the string. First, the Mongolian thistle. Next, the argali sheep. Finally, the cinereous vulture. Soon enough, the web collapses.
Now imagine that web at a global scale with each of Earth’s
estimated 8.7 million plant and animal species woven together in an interconnected, interdependent system. We are tugging at — and in some cases, snapping — those delicate threads faster than any time in human history. That crisis was once again brought to the forefront this week by an extensive report out of the United Nations that finds up to 1 million plant and animal species are at risk of extinction, many of them within mere decades.
The report is dire and alarming, but not surprising to those of us in the global conservation community. At Denver Zoo, we’ve been deeply concerned by the continuous decline of wildlife populations — estimated to be as high as 60 percent since 1970 — and have worked for more than 25 years to find solutions here on our 86-acre campus and around the world that will turn the tide. There are still many reasons to be hopeful and solutions do exist. We must act individually as well as collectively, at community, government and global scales, or we will all face the consequences.
We must all do more to reduce our environmental foot
print. If you don’t already, now is the time to begin to compost, opt for reusable over disposable items, reduce your water consumption and choose consumer goods made with sustainablysourced materials and ingredients. Be an advocate for wildlife and the environment within your family and social circles. Support organizations and individuals dedicated to giving this existential threat the attention it deserves.
More importantly than those actions, we must undergo a collective sea change in our mindset to halt and reverse a crisis of this magnitude, and create lasting, meaningful transformation. Don’t let the important messages delivered in this report fade from your memory. Explore nature to develop empathy for wildlife and a sense of responsibility for our role in its decline. Resist complacency and passivity — we must not fall into the trap of thinking we’re immune to the same factors decimating our fellow plant and animal species. We must weigh our impact on the natural world in every decision because its impact will weigh heavily on us.
There’s one thing this report makes clear: Each of us has a responsibility to be part of the solution. As the authors of the report point out, “Nature can be conserved, restored and used sustainably while simultaneously meeting other global societal goals through urgent and concerted efforts fostering transformative change.” We are lucky that the window for that change is still cracked open. We’re hopeful that with each of us doing our part on behalf of the planet, the next such report will convey a more optimistic message for future generations.