With the world losing species at an alarming rate, a conservation biologist explains how ideas about protecting biodiversity have evolved over the past 40 years.
E.O. Wilson was one of the world’s leading experts on ants, but his other passion was convincing humans to see themselves as part of the natural world.
E.O. Wilson was one of the world’s leading experts on ants, but his other passion was convincing humans to see themselves as part of the natural world.
When something is free, people use a lot of it. Economists are urging governments to compute values for natural resources – wildlife, plants, air, water – to create motives for protecting them.
Wildlife populations have plummeted by 68% since 1970. But we have a plan to turn things around.
A new plan targets areas around the world that can store carbon and protect large numbers of species. It calls for preserving these lands, working with Indigenous peoples and connecting wild areas.
Framing cats as responsible for declines in biodiversity is based on faulty scientific logic and fails to account for the real culprit – human activity.
Evolution seems to lead to increasing complexity of species. But perhaps a dominant, intelligent species like humans will always end up destroying itself.
/
1
