Paradise lost?

Who remembers the passenger pigeon? Once there were five billion of them flying over the cities of Canada and the US. So many in fact that a flock would be the width of a mile and they would block out the sun. But thanks to hunters and trappers, by 1914 they had become extinct.

Or maybe the Pinta Island tortoise – six feet long and weighing the same as a lion – which, if they weren’t hunted, starved to death after goats introduced by whalers and pirates ate all their vegetation. The last one died in 2012.

We know there have been at least five mass extinction events on our planet, from the meteor which killed off the dinosaurs around 66 million years ago to the ‘Great Dying’ 252 million years ago when a rise in greenhouse gases wiped out 96% of all species.

According to scientists we are on the brink of the sixth mass extinction – known as the Anthropocene extinction – and this time there isn’t an errant meteor or natural warming to blame. As the name implies, it is just us.

“We are already within a biodiversity crisis and on the way to an extinction and biodiversity crisis. We see in every species of animal or plant group that they

The passenger pigeon More plant and animal species are on the verge of extinction than ever before but work is under way to prevent the great extinction, writes

David Craik

are in decline. They are slowly vanishing from our neighbourhoods and forests,” says Dr Thomas A Neubauer, of Justus Liebig University in Giessen, Germany. “There is a shift in the distribution of species. Where we once found them, they are now absent because they are trying to find refuge. But they can’t run away from us and our impact forever.”

Species in decline

That includes human activities such as habitat destruction, deforestation, agriculture, climate change, building, pollution, over-fishing and introducing invasive species of animals and fauna into new environments.

“If we continue then many species will become extinct,” Neubauer adds. “The extinction rate after the dinosaur meteor remained high for five million years. Our biodiversity crisis is advancing much faster than that.”

According to the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services, one million out of eight million species on Earth are threatened with extinction. The WWF says population sizes of mammals, birds, fish, amphibians and reptiles have fallen by an average of 68% globally since 1970.

It says that, in some parts of the world, leatherback turtles have declined by between 20% and 98%, with an 84% decline at Tortuguero Beach in Costa Rica. African elephant populations in the Central African Republic have declined by up to 98% and, in the UK, populations of grey partridge have fallen 85% and populations of Arctic skua in Orkney have dropped by 62%.

Saving wildlife

There are more than 138,300 species featured on the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) Red List, with more than 38,500 species threatened with

“Our vision is that all orangutans will be able to live in the wild in secure environments”

Leif Cocks, The Orangutan Project

extinction, including 41% of amphibians, 37% of sharks and rays, 34% of conifers, 33% of reef-building corals, 26% of mammals and 14% of birds. It includes the blue whale and the eastern black rhinoceros.

In the UK plants like the spreading bellflower are on similar critically endangered lists.

“We can’t restore nature to what it was 200,000 years ago before humans arrived, but we can mitigate this crisis,” says Neubauer. “We need to get everyone together, from investors to the public to government and business. It is the fishermen, the politicians, and the non-governmental organisations. It is communication across all stakeholders, across countries to make the problem more visible.”

Investors such as asset managers and owners are certainly becoming more aware. The Finance for Biodiversity Pledge incorporates 75 institutions such as Fidelity International and Lombard Odier with over €12 trillion of assets under management.

They have pledged to protect and restore biodiversity through their finance activities and investments including

The blue whale has a heart the size of a car and its call is louder than a jet engine. However, it is threatened by plastic, toxins, ship strikes and being entangled in fishing gear

engaging with companies, assessing impact, setting targets, and reporting publicly on these factors before 2025.

One of the signatories, Federated Hermes International, has created an SDG Engagement Equity fund focused on the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals which include Life on Land and Life Below Water. It includes working with firms such as nutrition group Glanbia to restore degraded land and helping farmers learn more about protecting biodiversity.

Action is also being taken by the WWF and other bodies via conservation projects around the world (see opposite).

Orangutan plan

One non-WWF example is The Orangutan Project, which leads and sponsors projects aimed at protecting critically endangered orangutans and their forest homes.

This includes creating a rainforest ecosystem in Sumatra where orangutans can be released and monitored via a small transponder inserted between their shoulder blades. The ecosystems, which are also aimed at conserving natural fauna and other animals, also include antipoaching patrols and habitat protection.

“Our vision is that all orangutans will be able to live in the wild in secure environments,” says Leif Cocks, who founded the project in 1998. “In addition, many local people are employed in our Wildlife Protection Units. This has been wildly successful for many, many orangutans and we have even seen some give birth in the ecosystem.”

His work is applauded by Neubauer who believes this style of ‘holistic ecosystem’ is the best model for future biodiversity protection.

“You need to save entire habitats and regions, not

Photos: Alamy, Getty

From top to bottom: blue whales; the Coral Triangle; the Arctic skua; and the leatherback turtle

just an individual species,” he says. “If you save the ecosystem, all species are preserved. But it must be sustainable. When the project funding has run out, the protection has to continue.”

Biological clock

Cocks is also looking warily at the future.

“We’ve got 10 years left to get this right, both in terms of biodiversity and global warming because they are intertwined,” he says. “We need to ensure that we secure enough of the ecosystems to allow the orangutans, tigers and all the other species and biodiversity to survive this period. Then we can enable future generations to build on that and rewild the planet.”

Some of this language can seem overwhelming to the ordinary man and woman with busy working or family lives. But they can also make a difference at a community level.

Stephen Parker is chairman of the Somerset Rare Plants Group – a troop of 70 volunteers who cross the county’s countryside recording every single plant species they find. The aim is to promote vascular plant conservation.

“We began recording the population of rare plants such as the Greater Water Parsnip on the Somerset Levels but have now moved on to looking for all species. We collect around 50,000 records a year,” explains Parker. “The results are fed to landowners, The Wildlife Trust, Natural England and the Botanical Society which are then utilised by scientists and conservationists.”

He calls on other people to act and stem biodiversity loss. “There is a big role for amateur ecologists and botanists to provide data to help,” he says. “It is something we can all do.” n

5 CRITICALLY ENDANGERED GROUPS

Keeled box turtle

Found in China, Vietnam, Thailand, Myanmar, and India. Wildlife trafficking for food and the pet trade decimated its population. The World Land Trust has helped protect and rehabilitate the turtles through a land conservation programme.

Blue-throated macaw

Found in Bolivia, only 250 of these birds are left in the wild. Asociación Armonia protects the macaw’s habitat and has restored seven forest islands which are critical feeding areas.

Coral Triangle

The WWF is working to create a network of marine protected areas in the Coral Triangle in the Pacific Ocean. It is home to 75% of the world’s coral species and six of the world’s seven marine turtle species. They protect reefs and sea grass beds from destructive fishing, let fish reproduce and populations recover.

Blue whale

The largest animal on the planet, weighing as much as 200 tonnes or 33 elephants. It has a heart the size of a Volkswagen Beetle and its call is louder than a jet engine. However, the blue whale is threatened by plastic, toxins, ship strikes and being entangled in fishing gear. The WWF has satellite monitoring programmes to build up movement data and create protected areas.

Spreading bellflower

The National Botanic Garden of Wales is carefully monitoring this extremely rare plant. It has learned that the flower, with its star-like purple petals, has been in decline since the early 1800s, impacted by herbicides in roadside soil and woodland management changes. It is considering reintroducing the plant to the wild.

The spreading bellflower