Photo credit: Karina Volodyeva
In 2019, the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services, an independent international scientific body, announced that around one million species are at risk of extinction worldwide. This figure, based on the consensus of hundreds of experts and other researchers in 50 countries, made headlines around the world when it was included in the group's global assessment of biodiversity. Ta.
One in five species of vertebrates as we know them are at risk of being wiped out from the face of the earth, and scientists say around 52 different species of mammals, birds and amphibians are at risk of extinction each year. They say they are pushing one category of exposed species closer to oblivion. Many biologists believe that, of the millions of species existing on Earth, so far, about 1.7 million species are disappearing before science knows they exist. I believe.
Let's take insects as an example. A 2019 study estimated that four out of five insect species remain undiscovered, but researchers predict that due to insect decline, more than 40% of them will disappear within a few decades. I am concerned that I may be at risk. In 2017, the results of a German study made news around the world. Its headline was “Insect Armageddon.” The study found that measurements show that the abundance of flying insects in German nature reserves has fallen to only a quarter of what it was 27 years ago. By weight.
Extinction cascade: ecological tipping point
That's no small thing. Some warn of something called an “extinction cascade.” This means that the loss of one species, such as a butterfly or bee, leads to the secondary extinction of the plants it pollinates, which in turn means the end of specialized plants. – Eating animals, etc. If more and more living parts of an ecosystem are lost, the system itself risks collapsing.
Try removing parts of your car one by one, hoping it will take you somewhere. For Gerardo Ceballos, an ecologist at the National Autonomous University of Mexico in Mexico City, such is our general and seemingly increasing disregard for the sanctity of life's diversity. If we cannot stop more species from disappearing, the world's natural ecological functions that keep our air and water clean and our food supplies healthy will undoubtedly be weakened. Some scientists have warned that increasing environmental attacks could soon take us to a global ecological 'tipping point'. Wild animals may be in dire straits right now, Ceballos said in an interview, but the fate of our own species is probably not far off.
Ceballos, who helped spread the word to the world that a sixth mass extinction may be occurring, said: “Many scientists in a variety of fields believe that if this trend continues for the next 20 to 30 years, civilization may collapse.'' I feel like there isn't.” His calm demeanor is appalling.
Population explosion: humans dwarf the wild world
Sometime in the mid-to-late 1800s, when Charles Dickens was documenting the crowded squalor of London and Charles Darwin was championing the bizarre concept of “modified lineage,” the vast population of human beings… In size, it exceeded the mass of all wild land mammals. on earth.
According to one startling estimate, the human population has increased until there are more humans. by weight More mass than all our wild mammalian brethren combined. We have finally surpassed nature in the race to become the world's greatest life force. Soon we will leave it in the dust.
By 1900, humans weighed one-third more than wild mammals, and by the end of the next century, after the total weight of mammalian wildlife had been cut in half and the human population quadrupled, I am 10 times richer (in terms of weight). There are currently 8 billion people living on this busy planet, and by 2050 that number is expected to increase to nearly 10 billion people. We have reached a point where we have completely dwarfed the wild world. Like the proverbial bull in the china shop, we can hardly move without breaking something.
Human impact on Earth's biodiversity
Unfortunately, we are a fidgety species. More than three quarters of the Earth's surface (excluding Antarctica) and almost 90% of the oceans are directly affected by what we have been doing so far. Between 1993 and 2009 alone, entire wilderness areas around the world were flattened and new farms, towns and mines built, an area comparable to an area larger than India. With the loss of these wild lands, we are also losing wildlife. Many believe that the changes we make to the global environment, such as agriculture and development, are the greatest threat to the diversity of life for millions of years. But there are others.
Currently, over 70 percent of species worldwide are at risk of extinction due to rapidly growing human populations and overhunting, fishing, and harvesting (that is, taking more wildlife than can be replenished). Masu.
Climate change doesn't help. The greenhouse gas effects of our preference for oil are expected to cause massive climate change across a fifth of the world's land surface by the end of the 21st century. Plants and animals that cannot tolerate the heat are forced to migrate or perish. Meanwhile, our tendency to contaminate and spread exotic species and diseases seems to only gain momentum.
Biophilia and pet ownership
After all, people are people. And billions more people will own pets.
There are some scratches. In his inimitable and hopeful way, biologist Edward O. Wilson has shown that a growing awareness of human beings' innate biophilia, even in the face of clumsy and monstrous world domination, I imagined that our species would become more attentive to the non-human life around us. Our hard-wired wonderment toward other beings was supposed to add sensitivity to the way we manage the planet we share. Instead, our biophilia may have found another outlet in our pets.
By some estimates, the total number of wild vertebrates on Earth has declined by about 70% over the past 50 years, while the number of pets (dogs and cats, at least in the United States) has more than doubled over the same period.
This trend shows no signs of slowing down. Thirty million puppies and kittens are born in the United States each year, which equates to seven pet pets for every human born. More and more pet birds, lizards, and other exotic beasts are being kept in captivity or brought in from the jungle. We may eventually recognize our genetic need for and attachment to animals, as Wilson had hoped, but not in the wild. Instead we brought them into our house. As author and University of Bristol professor John Bradshaw suggests, the number of pets is rapidly increasing, becoming our on-demand wildlife.
As urbanization increases, pets will replace nature's role.
On the other hand, our relationship with the natural world is becoming increasingly distant. More than half of the world's population already lives in cities, and by 2050, more than two out of three of us will be living in cities. Fewer and fewer people are venturing into nature. Fewer and fewer of us have ever encountered a moose on a trail or observed a heron in an evening wetland. For a growing majority of people in cities around the world, dogs, cats, and other pets are familiar and our primary experience with animals.
Our focus now is on the pets we meet and keep. We are attracted to them, just as we have always been attracted to other living things. And, just as Wilson predicted, that impulse still seems old, deep-rooted, and stirring. The only difference is that the animals we focus on are not wild. they live with us. It seems that we are increasingly preferring to keep animals. our Life is about visiting them.
Impact of pets on wildlife
That's not all. Pets and the pet industry not only displace nature's role in the human experience, they also cause direct harm to wildlife.
In many ways, pets pose a clear threat to the wonderful, wild splendor of the rest of life on Earth. Dogs and cats stalk wild animals as killers with the assistance of humans. Animals are taken in the jungle to satisfy the pet trade. Diseases deadly to wildlife are spread by pets that fly around the world. Pets released outside of their natural habitat (such as Everglades pythons) eat all the wildlife they see or crowd out as indomitable competitors. The pet food industry's insatiable demand is draining vital feed fish from the ocean.
The impact is significant. Over the past five centuries, pets have been one of the main culprits in the decimation of literally hundreds of endangered bird, mammal, reptile, and amphibian species around the world.
Domestic cats alone contributed to the extinction of more than 60 species at the time, including the Stevens Island wren in New Zealand and the crow in Hawaii, forever removing the species from our planet's rich diversity. Lost. Dogs are thought to be responsible for the extinction of up to 11 species. Other pets, and the pet industry that supports them, are linked to declining populations of other wild animals around the world.
Irony: The wild world needs pets
Our biophilia is challenging. Our love of pets is contributing to perhaps the greatest environmental crisis facing Earth's ecosystems. The irony is that pet people are the same animal people the wild world needs to get back on its feet. Pet owners care more about their animals. They are more likely to watch birds or be absorbed in nature documentaries. The only problem is that our love for the animals we keep at home overshadows our view of the animals in the wild that are out of our reach. we love pets
they are part of our family. But the world's wildlife is also important. They are the mechanisms of natural systems and are key to our survival. They are part of our evolutionary history and integral to the way we think. They are wild and, unlike pets, keep their distance from our pedestrian lives and human routines. Their mysteries survive untouched, complex and inscrutable, intertwined in nature's vast and delicate web.
Unnatural companions: Rethinking the love of pets in an era of wildlife extinction © 2020 by Peter Christie by permission of Island Press, Washington, DC, licensed under CC BY-NC-ND 4.0. This excerpt was edited and created for the web by Earth | Food | Life, a project of the Independent Media Institute.
