HALTING THE EXTINCTION CRISIS
Our planet now faces a global extinction crisis never witnessed by humankind. Scientists predict that more than 1 million species are on track for extinction in the coming decades.
Why Is This So Important?
Each time species goes extinct, the world around us unravels a bit. The consequences are profound, not just in those places and for those species but for all of us. These are tangible consequential losses, such as crop pollination and water purification, but also spiritual and cultural ones.
Although often obscured by the noise and rush of modern life, people retain deep emotional connections to the wild world. Wildlife and plants have inspired our histories, mythologies, languages and how we view the world. The presence of wildlife brings joy and enriches us all — and each extinction makes our home a lonelier and colder place for us and future generations.
The current extinction crisis is entirely of our own making. More than a century of habitat destruction, pollution, the spread of invasive species, overharvest from the wild, climate change, population growth and other human activities have pushed nature to the brink. Addressing the extinction crisis will require leadership — especially from the United States — alongside bold, courageous, far-reaching initiatives that attack this emergency at its root.
https://www.biologicaldiversity.org/programs/biodiversity/elements_of_biodiversity/extinction_crisis/
2020 World Wildlife Day Film Showcase: Biodiversity from Jackson Wild on Vimeo.
Becoming Wild during a Pandemic: Orion Magazine
"I’m a person deeply affected by the wonder and beauty of life on Earth, so my main questions are: Who are we here, within the journey of existence? What is life like, not just for other people, but for all other beings living with us? What do they do, and why, and how? How do they experience life? What matters to them, and how do they experience meaning in their particular ways? How does life vary from individual to individual within a species?
Life in broad strokes is quite similar for many: stay alive, find food, keep your babies alive. In that sense we are all the same. But we are all the same in very different ways.
What’s one takeaway you’d recommend for re-engaging with the wild world, post-pandemic?
First, there’s a very serious side to considering the world post-pandemic. As I recently wrote, this disruptive pandemic is merely a gentle wake-up call; we cannot afford to hit snooze. Markets that bring wild animals into new, persistent proximity with other animals that they would not normally be jammed up against—and with humans they would not normally be in intimate contact with—have been the sources of several near-misses with sudden epidemics that were much more deadly than COVID-19 but, luckily, did not scale into pandemics.
Factory farms that are ever-more intensive, ever-larger have proven to be incubators of new strains of viruses that have found ways to exploit the tremendous opportunity that 7 billion humans being represent. SARS, MERS, Marburg, Ebola, HIV-AIDS, swine flu, bird flu—three-quarters of newly emerging infectious diseases erupt through our broken relationship with nature and our brutality to farmed creatures. And the pace of their emergences is accelerating.
There will be new diseases. Their emergence and disruptive chaos could become a chronic challenge to the most basic human thing: our ability to function socially. While there are silver linings in all the reduced activity, it’s only silver if it’s temporary and we learn something. What’s at risk isn’t just the excesses we could do without. What’s at risk includes very fundamental aspects of being human: being able to visit family members, properly grieving lost loved ones, playing or gathering with friends for meals.
We must act decisively against the self-inflicting causes of these emerging diseases. Wildlife markets need to be permanently closed and pursued aggressively when they go underground. Factory farms must be radically disaggregated into much smaller farms for a world that must learn to eat far less meat.
As we re-emerge post-pandemic, I hope we can maintain some newly re-learned habits of slowing pace, watching more closely, and finding great interest and peace in the changes and movements that living things constantly show us. I hope we seize this opportunity to see better, to enjoy, to learn from more of the world that lives close-by. There are other kinds of lives carrying on around us, passing along their cultures parallel to ours, and I feel a great beauty and great mystery in that."
"Becoming Wild during a Pandemic" https://orionmagazine.org/2020/04/becoming-wild-during-a-pandemic/
✨ 🐉 Sounds of Survival | #bioGraphic
Wellington, meet the belugas! 🐳 🐧 This weekend, Wellington visited Kayavak, Mauyak and baby Annik, who were very curious about this little rockhopper. Belugas are northern hemisphere animals, so they would likely never see a penguin! pic.twitter.com/XrpF3BlKnu— Shedd Aquarium (@shedd_aquarium) March 30, 2020
