“IMAGINING OTHER…”
‘Protecting the Planet’ & ‘Wellcome to the
Science of Protecting the Planet’ (WEA courses)
Species Decline
Return to Imagining-other home page Link
to: Updates and extra notes
Summary:
Introduction,
(i) on the importance of biodiversity to us (ii) Jane Goodall on the
Coronavirus pandemic and wild animals. (See also 3 below - #significance)
1.
The problem #problem
#state
of nature reports
2.
Causes #causes: Global warming, see 4 below 2.1 #farming and meat production 2.2 loss of #wildflower meadows 2.3 #overfishing 2.4 #deforestation 2.5 #palm oil 2.6 pollution (see Some problems and solutions) 2.7 #population growth 2.8
#war and its impact on the environment
2.9 other thoughts: #reality bubble #invasive species
3.
Significance for us #significance
4.
Examples of impact of #global warming (see also Effects of climate change)
5.
other examples of species decline: #other #butterflies #hedgehog #birds
6. Oceans & rivers: #fish
and sea life (see also under ‘causes’ 2.3) for coral reefs see Effects of climate change
7.
Insects, plants and food #insects
8.
The Sixth Extinction #sixth extinction
9.
What can be done
(a)
individual/voluntary #solutions
also #conservation (b)
#legislation (c)
#meat (d) #re-wilding (e) #make ecocide a
crime (f) #animal
rights
10.
Conclusions #conclusion
11.
References #references
NOTES:
(i) Why Biodiversity is Important to us: https://www.ecowatch.com/why-biodiversity-matters-2646065739.html?rebelltitem=1#rebelltitem1
(By Marie Quinney, based on World Economic Forum report)
2. Biodiversity Helps Fight
Disease: plants are essential for medicines. For example, 25% of drugs used in modern
medicine are derived from rainforest plants while 70% of cancer drugs are natural
or synthetic products inspired by nature. This means that every time
a species goes extinct, we miss out on a potential new medicine.
Second, biodiversity due to protected natural areas has been
linked to lower instances of disease such as Lyme disease and
malaria. See (ii) below also...
(ii) Jane Goodall on the links
between our treatment of animals and the spread of the Covid -19 virus: Scientists warn that if we
continue to ignore the causes of these zoonotic diseases, we may be infected
with viruses that cause pandemics even more disruptive than COVID-19.
Many people
believe that we have come to a turning point in our relationship with the
natural world. We need to halt deforestation
and the destruction of natural habitats around the globe. We need to make use
of existing nature-friendly, organic alternatives, and develop new ones, to
feed ourselves and to maintain our health. We need to eliminate poverty so that
people can find alternative ways to make a living other than by hunting and
selling wild animals and destroying the environment. We need to assure that
local people, whose lives directly depend on and are impacted by the health of
the environment, own and drive good conservation decisions in their own
communities as they work to improve their lives. Finally, we need to connect
our brains with our hearts and appropriately use our indigenous knowledge,
science and innovative technologies to make wiser decisions about people,
animals and our shared environment.
While there
is a justified focus on bringing COVID-19 under control, we must not forget the
crisis with potentially long-term catastrophic effects on the planet and future
generations – the climate crisis. The movement calling for industry and
governments to impose restrictions on the emission of greenhouse gases, to
protect forests, and clean up the oceans, has been growing.
This
pandemic has forced industry to temporarily shut down in many parts of the
world. As a result, many people have for the first time experienced the
pleasure of breathing clean air and seeing the stars in the night sky.
My hope is
that an understanding of how the world should be, along with the
realization that it is our disrespect of the natural world that has led to the
current pandemic, will encourage businesses and governments to put more
resources into developing clean, renewable energy, alleviate poverty and help
people find alternative ways of making a living that do not involve the
exploitation of nature and animals.
Let us
realize we are part of, and depend upon, the natural world for food, water and
clean air. Let us recognize that the health of people, animals and the
environment are connected. Let us show respect for each other, for the other
sentient animals, and for Mother Nature. For the sake of the wellbeing of our
children and theirs, and for the health of this beautiful planet Earth, our
only home.
Reposted with permission from Mongabay.
From: https://www.ecowatch.com/jane-goodall-covid19-2645922488.html?rebelltitem=6#rebelltitem6
1. The problem (historical overview of reports and surveys):
(i)
2013
State of Nature report (by 25 British
environmental organisations), of the 3,148 species studied, 60% had declined in
the last 50 years; 31% had declined badly and 600 were threatened with
extinction. We lost 44m birds between 1996 and 2008. We have lost 99% of our
wildflower meadows, half of our ancient woodland, three-quarters of our
heathland, three-quarters of our ponds.
(ii)
8th Dec 2015 (Emma Howard reported) Nature Communications
article on Declining Resilience of
Ecosystem Functions under Biodiversity Loss:
https://www.nature.com/articles/ncomms10122
Biggest
analysis of British wildlife ever conducted, with researchers from Reading University,
and the Centre for Ecology and Hydrology (led by Dr Tom Oliver).
The
study builds on the 2013 State of nature report.
It
looked at records covering 4,424 species, over the period 1970-2009, and was based
on observations by thousands of trained volunteers.
In decline:
28% of pollinators (bees, moths,
hoverflies) à rise in price of food, some crops
unavailable
16% of natural pest controllers (ants, ground
beetles, hedgehogs)
8% of those supporting decomposition
10% of those helping carbon
sequestration
14% of those with cultural value (lesser horseshoe
bat, dark green fritillary butterfly, pasque flower) – note this is an
important area of loss to human wellbeing.
(iii) The 2016 State of Nature report found: More than one in 10 of the
UK’s wildlife species are threatened with extinction. (Damian Carrington
14/9/16). The numbers of the most endangered creatures have fallen by
two-thirds since 1970. This covers birds, animals, fish and plants.
Overall 53% - 56% of species declined between 1970
and 2011, but some species increased - this ‘does not look like a healthy,
natural situation’ (Mark Eaton, conservation scientist at RSPB) – some species
going up very quickly, and others going down equally quickly, so we could end
up with ‘50% left’.
(iv)
(1-7 Sep 2017, New Statesman, Simon Barnes):
According to the Living Planet index,
compiled by the WWF and the Zoological Society the world’s wild animals will
decline in number by two-thirds by 2020. Of the 85,000 species listed by the
IUCN, more than 24,000 are in danger, including lions, rhinos and giraffes.
Numbers have fallen by 40% since 1985. Among primates, three-quarters have
falling numbers, with 60% threatened with extinction, including gorillas and chimpanzees.
In the UK we have lost 8% of our butterfly species, 3% of
our beetles, and the hen harrier is close to extinction. Between 1,200 and
3,180 species will have become nationally extinct in the past couple of
centuries.
(v) 2018. The fourteenth
ordinary meeting of the parties to the convention took place on 17–29 November
2018, in Sharm El-Sheikh, Egypt.[30]
(The
UN Convention on Biodiversity (CBD),
known informally as the Biodiversity Convention, is a multilateral treaty. The Convention has three
main goals including: the conservation of biological diversity (or biodiversity);
the sustainable use of its components; and the fair and equitable sharing of
benefits arising from genetic resources.
The Convention was opened for signature
at the Earth
Summit in Rio de Janeiro on 5 June 1992
and entered into force on 29 December 1993.
Regular meetings are held, called
‘Conference of the Parties’ – or COP).
The 2018
UN Biodiversity Conference closed on 29 November 2018 with broad
international agreement on reversing the global destruction of nature and biodiversity
loss threatening all forms of life on Earth. Parties adopted the Voluntary
Guidelines for the design and effective implementation of ecosystem-based approaches to climate change
adaptation and disaster risk reduction.[31]
Governments also agreed to accelerate
action to achieve the Aichi Biodiversity Targets, agreed in 2010, from now until
2020. Work to achieve these targets will take place at the global, regional,
national and subnational levels.
Intensive monoculture and human
overpopulation (see 2.7 below) are the two most pertinent biodiversity issues
to address.
(vi) 2019. More than 70 environmental
organisations and research institutes from across the UK have collaborated on
the State of Nature 2019 reported on
loss of nature since 1970. (Unlike previous efforts in 2013 and 2016, government
agencies were involved). Main findings:
15 per cent of species under threat of extinction
and 2 per cent of species have already gone for good.
Average abundance of wildlife has fallen by 13 per
cent with the steepest losses in the last ten years.
41 per cent of UK species studied have
fallen and 133 species have already been lost from our shores
Butterflies and moths, down 17 per cent and 25
per cent respectively. Numbers of high brown fritillary and
grayling butterflies, have fallen by more than three quarters.
The average amount of mammals has fallen by 26 per
cent and the wild cat and greater mouse-eared bat are almost extinct
(vii) May 2019 the United Nations report from the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform
on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES):
Almost 1
million species face extinction - the largest number in human history ever to be facing
the threat of oblivion. Many species could be wiped out within decades.
There are threats to more than 40% of amphibians, to 33% of coral reefs
(around half of all live coral reef cover has been lost since the 1870s), and
to over a third of all marine mammals.
(viii)
July 19th 2019. IUCN (International Union for the Conservation of
Nature) has published its latest red list. A third of the species that
could be assessed are under threat.
7 primates are in decline, and 2
families of ray have been pushed to the brink by overfishing. Total species on
the list is now 105,732 (out of millions on earth) none of which had improved
in status.
In May scientists found that wildlife
populations had declined by 60% since 1970 and plant extinctions are happening
at a frightening rate.
More than half the freshwater fish in
Japan, and more than a third in Mexico are threatened with extinction – which
would deprive billions of people of food and income.
Global heating is included as a cause of
species decline in the red list.
(ix) 2020.
20th Jan 2020. Ahead of the 50th Davos World Economic Forum, the
new acting executive secretary of the UN Convention on Biological Diversity,
Elizabeth Matuma Mrema urges countries to take definitive action. ‘People’s lives depend on biodiversity in
ways that are not always apparent or appreciated. Human health ultimately
depends on ecosystem services: the availability of fresh water, fuel, food
sources.’ [See 3. Below] If the global community doesn’t listen it will
have said ‘let people continue to die, let the degradation continue, let
deforestation continue, pollution continue, and we’ll have given up as an
international community to save the planet.’
Davos has recognised that
biodiversity loss is the third biggest risk to the world, in terms of likely
severity, ahead of infectious disease, terror attacks and interstate conflict.
(Patrick Greenfield)
April
6th 2020: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/apr/06/ban-live-animal-markets-pandemics-un-biodiversity-chief-age-of-extinction
The acting executive secretary of the Convention,
commenting on the Coronavirus pandemic currently raging, has said:
“The message we are getting is if we don’t take care of nature, it
will take care of us,” she told the Guardian.
“It would be good to ban the live animal markets as China has done
and some countries. But we should also remember you have communities,
particularly from low-income rural areas, particularly in Africa, which are
dependent on wild animals to sustain the livelihoods of millions of people.
“So unless we get alternatives for these communities, there might
be a danger of opening up illegal trade in wild animals which currently is
already leading us to the brink of extinction for some species.
April
9th 2020: https://www.ecowatch.com/biodiversity-loss-climate-crisis-2645676582.html?rebelltitem=1#rebelltitem1
loss of species could occur suddenly when temperatures change...
2.Causes:
2. 1. Loss of habitat, due to
changes in land use:
Farming:
More than a third of the world’s land surface is devoted to food production, and about 25% of
greenhouse gas emissions are caused by land clearing, crop production and
fertilization, and essential crops are under threat because of years of
unsustainable agricultural practices. 23% of land areas have reduced agricultural
productivity due to land degradation.
(i) From Conservation
International newsletter Jan 2020:
By going meat-free one day a
week, you can save more than 325,000 gallons of water per year
Eating
meat-free just one day a week can reduce your impact on the planet. It’s easy
to not think about the environment when you’re biting into a juicy hamburger,
but consider these costs:
If everyone
in the United States went meat-free for one day, it would save 100 billion
gallons of water.
On veganism,
see Ecologist for 10th Jan 2020.
Excellent
substantial piece by Damian Carrington on some myths about (i.e. against)
vegetarianism:
(ii)
From the #reality
bubble (2.8 below): One of our biological blind spots is meat slaughter and
processed food: ‘anywhere from 700,000 to 1 million chickens a year are still
conscious when they are scalded to death in the scalder.’
Pesticides: July 18th 2019. Article by Caroline Lucas: https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2019/jul/17/pesticide-industry-health-planet-mps-ffcc-report-farmers
Quotes the RSA Food, Farming and Countryside
Commission after independent two year enquiry. Farming has been about
specialisation, consolidation and control over nature – many farmers are simply
raw material suppliers to a processing industry. Pesticides need to be reduced, but there is a
backlash: half our agronomists (advisors on farming) are employed by
agrochemical companies.
We need sustainable agroecological
farming. A tax on processed meat (resisted by Dept of Health). Copenhagen has
90% organic food in municipal institutions without increasing procurement
costs.
(Letter subsequently argues against meat
tax...)
2.2 destruction of wildflower
meadows etc: The latest Plantlife
research reveals that the 97% loss of meadows works out at 7.5 million acres of
wildflower habitat gone and that REALLY MATTERS to bees. Take a
moment to consider the startling numbers:
One square metre of a wildflower
meadow in June is home to an average of 570 flowers on a single day. So… one
acre of wildflower habitat can contain over 2.3 million flowers. Multiplying
that up, it works out that we’ve lost
17.3 trillion flowers from our countryside (and to put that into perspective,
it’s as if every person in the UK was carrying a bunch of 260,000 flowers).
These flowers would produce around 6,700 tons of nectar sugar. That’s tons of
nectar sugar. And that would be enough to feed 621 billion bees… per day.
https://www.plantlife.org.uk/everyflowercounts/
2.3
over-exploitation including over-fishing,( contributing to the fact
mentioned above that there could be more plastic than fish in the ocean by
2050). Nearly 75
percent of freshwater resources are now devoted to
livestock production, and in 2015, 33 percent of marine fish stocks
were being harvested at unsustainable levels.)
The Sea: the North Sea is almost dead from over-fishing (Callum Roberts: The
Unnatural History of the Sea, Gaia Books) Sep 2007 (New St 13.08.07)
May 2020.
Who owns our fish? https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/52420116?mc_cid=45826e4139&mc_eid=3dd466b44f 55% of the value is owned by other countries.
More than £160m worth of the
English quota is in the hands of vessels owned by companies based in Iceland, Spain
and the Netherlands, thanks to a practice known as "quota-hopping".
That amounts to 55% of the
quota's annual value in 2019.
Taking back control of UK fishing
waters was a key issue for many Brexit supporters.
But with fishing still an
obstacle in the UK's trade talks with the European Union, the figures raise
questions about what taking back control will actually mean.
June
2020: overview of deforestation: https://www.ecowatch.com/rainforest-loss-2019-2646150833.html?rebelltitem=1#rebelltitem1
May
2020. Pakistan to plant a billion trees,
to help the unemployed and to fight the effects of climate change:
https://www.globalcitizen.org/en/content/pakistan-coronavirus-unemployed-planting-trees/
May
2020: while the pandemic is keeping
people at home, governments are less able to monitor forests and to prevent
illegal felling of timber, so the amount of deforestation has increased. https://www.ecowatch.com/rainforest-deforestation-coronavirus-2646072407.html?rebelltitem=1#rebelltitem1
Rainforest Rescue have
launched a petition, and they explain: One of the consequences of Covid-19 has
been a huge increase in online shopping – a trend that is likely to last as the
pandemic subsides.
A consequence of the boom
is that the consumption of paper and cardboard for packaging material has
skyrocketed. And the ecological impact of that demand is massive.
Paper and pulp companies
are playing a major role in rainforest destruction, especially on the Indonesian island of Sumatra.
And it's not just nature
that's suffering: The companies don't shrink back from violence against people
in their way – on March 4, an Asia Pulp
& Paper (APP) subsidiary used a drone to spray herbicide on the fields
of a village in Sumatra's Jambi province, destroying the food crops and
livelihoods of the villagers.
This is just one of a
long string of well-documented conflicts involving APP.
90 environmental and
human rights organizations want to hit APP where it really hurts – by calling
on buyers and investors to stop doing business with APP until it radically
cleans up its act.
Aug.
2019: Brazil. Deforestation and loss
of jungle is a concern, especially since the rightwing president – Jair Bolsonaro
– has encouraged a surge in logging and clearing. Brazil has closed the Amazon
Fund, and Norway and Germany have stopped donating to it in protest at Brazil
breaking the terms of the deal. The fund has been central to attempts to limit
deforestation – though it is disputed how much effect it has had.
In the year to July there has been a
278% rise in deforestation, according to Brazil’s National Institute for Space
Research. There has recently been a ‘fire day’ – clearing land for crops, and
the number of fires in the area has increased.
2.5 Palm oil.
20th Oct 2019. Palm oil: At National Trust AGM two members
argued NT should end its deal with Cadbury’s to sponsor their Egg Hunt. The
hunt raises £7m each year, but palm oil
‘is fuelling an extinction and climate crisis’. A resolution to end the
sponsorship was defeated when just over 20,000 voted to see the contract out
and nearly 13,000 voted to end it. Bruce Cadbury, great-grandson of the founder
said the firm had lost its Quaker values. Parent company is now Mondelez. The
trust argued it would cost several million pounds to get out of the contract
early, and said Mondelez had provided assurances it was addressing
environmental issues. Amnesty International has also accuse Mondelez of serious
human rights violations.
Link to
‘ethical consumer’ on palm oil:
https://www.ethicalconsumer.org/palm-oil
17th Jan 2020. Palm
Oil. (Fiona
Harvey) Some of the world’s biggest brands are failing in their commitments to
ban deforestation from their supply chains through their use of palm oil,
according to reports by WWF and Rainforest Action Network. Kellogg’s, Greggs,
Warburtons, et al scored badly. M & S and Co-op scored high. 15 out of 173
were performing well. The Consumer Goods Forum which began in 2010 involved a
resolution by companies to reduce deforestation through their supply chain to
net zero by 2020. RAN assessed 8 brands involved in south-east Asia (the Leuser
Ecosystem) Kellogg’s General Mills, Mondelez, Hershey, Mars, Pepsico, Nestle
and Unilever and found none was performing adequately in avoiding ‘conflict
palm oil’. Unilever came out best in the RAN report.
12th Feb 2020, from
change.org,: Just to let
you know that we are looking forward to hearing about Kellogg's progress in the
battle against the widespread destruction of orangutans and their habitat.
Nestle are doing some interesting
things to ensure the palm oil they use is clean. They are using satellite
tracking to identify deforestation so they can take action if it is one of
their suppliers: https://www.nestle.com/csv/raw-materials/palm-oil/palm-oil-transparency-dashboard
We will go through our original requests and measure any progress made (details
below).
x Only use suppliers
that involve zero rainforest destruction and zero harm to orangutans – NOT MET.
x Publish complete
transparency around the palm oil companies it has relationships with –
published in their annual milestones report and will need to see 2018’s when it
is published for evidence of progress from 60% not traceable to plantations.
x Publicly support
Wilmar on it's recent pledges and continue to apply a spotlight to ensure their
actions back up their words – REFUSE TO DO THIS. We thought this had been
agreed but Kellogg’s are adamant that they do not take a public stance on such
things, despite some hard questioning from Asha who rightly wants to know, if
they won't, who will?
x Work with the other
22/26 worst palm oil offenders to adopt the same higher standards as Wilmar has
pledged to - HAD NOT REVIEWED SO COULD NOT YET ANSWER.
x Demonstrate
progress ie how will we know real progress is being made, as previous promises
have not resulted in less rainforest destruction or orangutan harm – IN
PROGRESS. In a few months Europe will move to 100% Segregated ie know
where the palm oil has come from the milling stage onwards but does not meet
our request for traceability to the plantation.
x Lead the change and
show the industry and wider world what is possible - use brand weight and
influence to make positive changes – NOT DEMONSTRATED.
Items to follow up during the
next discussion:
1.
The picture for Europe is 98% identity preserved (know which plantation the oil
was grown on) and 2% mass balance (source of plantation is unknown). Can the 2%
of mass balance be eliminated so it is more sustainable? Europe will be 100%
Segregated soon.
.
Get more information on where the non-segregated/mass balance palm oil comes
from. Mainly in markets where sustainable oil is not available and so
need to show leadership and change these markets.
3.
What does good look like ie what is Kellogg's plan to move from the current
status to completely rainforest-friendly IP palm oil (how can real progress be
measured)? They have not been working towards IP nor were they able to
provide a plan that the rest of Kellogg’s is working towards globally on the
use of palm oil.
4.
How can Kellogg's use it's influence to affect change across the palm oil
industry? Only want to work behind the scenes with suppliers but this is
unlikely to drive forward the real change that is required, at the speed that
is necessary.
5.
Have there been any palm oil suppliers/traders who have behaved so badly that
they have been 'struck off'? Does Kellogg's have any red lines eg child
exploitation which mean a supplier relationship must be terminated? IOI
were struck off but have now been reinstated.
6.
Could Kellogg's help put in place a logo or some way to make it easier for
consumers to know which products have IP only palm oil in them? Will
investigate putting ‘No Palm Oil’ logo on products with none in and a
‘Certified RSPO’ logo on products with IP or Segregated palm oil.
7.
Can Kellogg's find out from the RSPO when greenpalm credits will be phased out
ie the industry has had enough time too reform structurally? No answer
yet, will find out.
Date? Source?
Environmental groups want a company removed from the London Stock Exchange’s
investment index of environmentally friendly companies – because of its
environmental damage, plus a string of allegations of corruption and
unsustainable business practices. Golden
Agri-Resources (GAR) is on the FTSE4Good indices. Two of its senior
executives have been arrested, and it has been accused of polluting a lake in
Indonesia. It also produces palm oil
and therefore causes deforestation
2.6 pollution (this includes plastic: Since 1980 plastic pollution has increased tenfold)... see Some
environmental problems and solutions
Population: global growth: predictions for world
population, from 6.5 bn in 2010 to 9.2 bn in 2050; consequences: 50 m new
mouths to feed each year (= population of UK/Italy); if China increasingly
eats meat, then demand for grain will increase; perhaps also demand for
biofuels. So: food prices increase – and hunger unless something done. See WDM
report: The Great Hunger Lottery. (Patrick Collinson, G24.07.10) Also notes
that it is likely that investment in food is a good bet – but speculation will
increase prices further…
Book: Population Ten Billion, by Danny
Dorling, (Constable) professor of human geography
at university of Sheffield.
NS 10-16 May 2019 editorial: UN report of Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem
Services – humans account for only 0.01% of (the biomass of) life on earth
but we are destroying it. Earth’s population has doubled since 1970, to 7.6
billion. One million plant and animal species are at risk of extinction soon.
The biomass of animals has declined by 82%.... ‘We are eroding the very foundations of economies, livelihoods,
food security, health and quality of life worldwide.’ See next section:
Population growth – Paul Ehrlich strikes again! https://www.theguardian.com/cities/2018/mar/22/collapse-civilisation-near-certain-decades-population-bomb-paul-ehrlich
- ‘perpetual growth
is the creed of the cancer cell’ – to start with we must: ‘make modern contraception and back-up abortion
available to all and give women full equal rights, pay and opportunities with
men.’ This will take a long time to reduce the world’s population, which
he estimates should be 1.5 – 2 billion, or 5.6 billion fewer than at present...
However, a
letter 28th March, from Prof. John MacInnes argues Ehrlich’s views
are ‘discredited’ – ‘the birth rate in the developing world is now lower than it
was in rich countries a few decades ago. ... the carrying capacity of our
planet ... is almost certainly well above the likely peak of population that
will be reached in the second half of this century. Reducing the vast global
inequalities in energy consumption will do far more for the environment than
the ultimately racist idea that the poor have too many children.’
2.8 Jan 2020. War and its impact on the environment:
1st
Nov 2018, Michael McCarthy, author of The Moth Snowstorm – Nature and Joy: damage
to nature is usually a secondary consideration – except for agent orange spread
on 12,000 sq miles of forest in the Vietnam war, or the mass oil pollution from
the Sea Island terminal in Kuwait during the Gulf war 1991. In the second world
war 60 million people or 3% of the world population (2.3 billion at the time)
died... but the amount of shipping sunk in the battle of the Atlantic was the
equivalent of about 250 Brent Spar oil rigs (Greenpeace forced Shell not to
sink it but move it for breaking up). Professor Tim Birkenhead of Sheffield
University, in the journal British Birds, suggests the war badly affected
breeding of guillemots on Skomer Island off the west coast of Wales. He
estimates there were 100,000 individuals in 1934, but only 4,856 in 1963, a
reduction of 95%. Now the numbers have gone up to 23,746. The worst decline was
between 1940 and 1946, and oil pollution is the most likely cause. The ocean is
far less resilient than we have thought.
2.9
Other thoughts:
(i)‘The Reality Bubble’ by Ziya Tong –
(review Nesrine Malik 4th Jan 2020). Our blind spots are responsible
for the destruction of our habitat. 95%
of all animal species are smaller than the human thumb. 0.2kg of body weight is
bacterial cells. One handful of soil contains more microbes than there are
people on Earth. One of our biological blind spots is meat slaughter and
processed food: ‘anywhere from 700,000 to 1 million chickens a year are still
conscious when they are scalded to death in the scalder.’ The drive for
efficiency and more profit has swallowed up time, space, ownership, leisure...
(ii) Aug.
2019. Story about rats on an Alaskan island (invasive species...): https://www.hakaimagazine.com/features/the-rat-spill/
3.1 18th March 2020. We have a pandemic caused by a
Coronavirus... Covid-19, which probably originated in a ‘wild food’ market in
China. John Vidal asks:
“Only a decade or two ago it was widely thought
that tropical forests and intact natural environments teeming with exotic
wildlife threatened humans by harbouring the viruses and pathogens that lead to
new diseases in humans such as Ebola, HIV and dengue.
But a number of researchers today think that
it is actually humanity’s destruction of
biodiversity that creates the conditions for new viruses and diseases such
as Covid-19, the viral disease that emerged in China in December 2019, to arise
– with profound health and economic impacts in rich and poor countries alike.
In fact, a new discipline, planetary
health, is emerging that focuses on
the increasingly visible connections between the wellbeing of humans, other
living things and entire ecosystems.”
David Quammen, author of Spillover:
Animal Infections and the Next Pandemic, recently wrote in the New York Times. “We cut
the trees; we kill the animals or cage them and send them to markets. We
disrupt ecosystems, and we shake viruses loose from their natural hosts. When
that happens, they need a new host. Often, we are it.”
3.2 Climate breakdown and the decimation of the
natural world are connected, and human action is the cause. “The essential,
interconnected web of life on Earth is getting smaller and increasingly
frayed,” said Professor Josef Settele (ecologist and Co-chair of the IPBES).
( We can expect opposition to changes from vested interests, but there
is still time to conserve natural habitats, if we act quickly to preserve key
areas. )
3.3
We are losing both biodiversity and bio-abundance. Though
the range of some insects, also
lichen, has increased with the improvement in water quality – especially the EU
urban wastewater treatment directive. The areas in which freshwater insects
were found fell by 47% from 1970 to 1994, but have expanded since, and were in
2015 7% higher than 50 years ago. This shows something can be done... (Damian
Carrington 18th Feb 2020).
3.4
We are now going through the sixth extinction.
(Palaeontologists agree that there have been 5 major extinctions in the history
of the earth (*). The most recent saw the dinosaurs killed off 65 million years
ago. )
Importance of biodiversity – rich biodiversity means
more stability, chances of survival better for all in the system.
Biodiversity is a crucial resource: for food,
medicine, fuel, economic benefit etc and 5 ‘functions’: pollination, pest control, decomposition, carbon
sequestration, cultural value.
Without the
life-essential services nature provides — breathable air, drinkable water,
healthy oceans, a stable climate — humans will not survive.
Nature provides economic and health benefits of
about £30bn a year (government 2011 analysis). But public funding for
biodiversity has fallen by 32% from 2008 to 2015.
Loss of balance (Simon Barnes): domesticated animals are not declining
– and nor are humans (themselves animals!). The balance is changing: whereas
10,000 years ago humans and their domestic animals made up 0.4% of the total,
now it’s 96% and rising.
(1-7 Sep 2017, New Statesman, Simon Barnes).
John Burton of the World Land Trust says: ‘We’ll always have
rats and cockroaches and their like for company. Which is not inappropriate.’
It is ironic that the species that will survive are those we have always
despised. They will survive because they have adapted to live with humans...
Meanwhile we are killing off numbers of species because we think of ourselves
as superior.
Peter Singer, the ethical philosopher, says we suffer from
‘speciesism’ – we have evolved from only caring about our immediate family, to
the tribe, the nation, and now to all humanity (perhaps!). But now we need to
extend our ‘circles of concern’ to include animals.
4.
Examples due to effects of global warming: (See also Effects of climate change)
May 2015: a ‘meta-study’ of
131 studies of the impact of climate change on biodiversity loss concludes that
one in six species face extinction
if nothing is done about global warming and the temperature rises by 4 degrees.
If the rise in global temperature is kept back to 2 degrees then one in twenty
species still face extinction.
Most
endangered: those that depend on Arctic ice.
30th
April 2017 (Alys Fowler) RHS: Gardening in a Changing Climate:
In the south – prolonged periods without rain, in the north
– wetter winters. More extremes, wetter and windier storms and more flooding
and water-logging. Hence a longer
growing season for some plants, but poor for those that need a cold spell in
winter. Earlier flowering will stress pollinating insects (out of sync!) – and
some new pests are likely (rosemary beetles are a recent introduction).
NB: Plants remove CO2 from the atmosphere and lock carbon in
the soil. Garden soils store almost 25% more carbon than arable soils. Gardens
make up 25% of all urban areas and account for around 25,000 sq km of our land.
20th
Aug 2017: Sea-birds (Robin McKie)
Our populations of arctic skuas, arctic terns and kittiwakes
are in free fall. Colonies are withering away, especially in northern Scotland.
On St Kilda: a 99% reduction in kittiwake numbers since 1990. Marwick Head on
Orkney – once a home to thousands of kittiwakes - is deserted. Fair Isle
puffins are down from 20,000 to 10,000 over the past 30 years. On Orkney and
Shetland guillemots have halved in number... in the past 25 years Scotland may
have lost half its breeding bird population.
The UK is home to most of the world’s population of some of
these birds. The government carries out a census every 15 years but has not
taken any action.
The
main cause is the 1C rise in sea temperature – this has led
to a loss of zooplankton, and sand eels have disappeared from many parts of the
Atlantic and North Sea. The birds which only eat sand eels are declining more
rapidly.
Antarctica:
1st Sep 2017 Jonathan Watts.
Growth
rates of some fauna such as bryozoans moss and a marine worm have been
increasing. The moss then pushes out other species and reduces overall biodiversity
levels. The area usually has a very rich biodiversity – like coral reefs. We
had been more concerned about the Arctic than the far bigger southern ice cap –
but temperatures have been rising there
Changing
seasons; Al Gore points out (p 152 ff), if the seasons change, then food
(plants or insects) will not necessarily be available for creatures when they
hatch – since hatching has been ‘timed’ for the point in the year when food is
available.
Climate
change means more migratory butterflies have been arriving – clouded yellow,
red admiral and painted lady have all increased. (Patrick Barkham 15th
Dec 2017)
Consequences
for sea food: 3rd Sep 2017(Robin McKie):
There
will be new fish in our waters as the temperature rises – some will be harmful
to other species, others may become new items in our diet, according to a
report in Aquatic Conservation: Marine and Freshwater Ecosystems.
Slipper
limpets could destroy mussel and oyster beds, but the American razor clam and
the Pacific oyster could be valuable for fishermen.
Haddock
is being forced north – but sole and plaice have nowhere to go. Cod may be more
resilient, but it is being caught more round Iceland. Cuttlefish and sardines
are rising in numbers, and red mullet and john dory will become more common.
2nd Feb 2018. Arctic and
biodiversity:
Oliver Milman - polar bears are sliding towards extinction faster than
previously feared. Research by US Geological Survey and Uni of California Santa
Cruz, published in Science, shows polar bears have a 50% higher metabolism than
previously thought, and so require more prey to meet their energy needs at a
time when sea ice is receding. There are some 26,000 polar bears in the arctic
today. They are leading a feast and famine lifestyle. The arctic is warming at
twice the average global rate, and has declined by about 13% a decade since
1979. In the past 10 years Greenland has lost two trillion tonnes of its ice
mass.
11th Dec 2019, Fiona
Harvey. The Guam
rail has been saved by captive breeding from the IUCN red list. It had been
endangered by the brown tree snake, accidentally introduced from US at the end
of WW2. The echo parakeet has gone from critically endangered (10 years ago) to
vulnerable. There are 112,432 species on the list, of which more than 30,000
are on the brink of extinction. 73 species have declined despite conservation
efforts.
In June 2020
the IUCN hold its four-yearly Conservation Congress, and in October the UN
Biodiversity Convention will hold a meeting in China. Climate change is the
main problem according to the head of climate change at WWF.
7th Jan. 2020. Patrick Greenfield: Nature Ecology
and Evolution paper on decline of insects.
The call to action by more
than 70 scientists from across the planet advocates immediate action on human
stress factors to insects which include habitat loss and fragmentation, the
climate crisis, pollution, over-harvesting and invasive species.
Phasing out
synthetic pesticides and fertilisers used in industrial farming and aggressive
greenhouse gas emission reductions are among a series of urgent “no-regret”
solutions to reverse what conservationists have called the “unnoticed insect apocalypse”.
24th April 2020. Damian Carrington. Insect numbers dropped by a
quarter in three decades.
May
2020. Bumble Bees trick plants into flowering early: https://www.ecowatch.com/bumblebees-plants-flower-early-2646064252.html?rebelltitem=4#rebelltitem4
As warmer spring temperatures cause
pollinators to awaken before plants
flower, this activity could ensure early-rising bees find food.
And, from
(pre)history: the woolly rhino probably died out as a result of climate change!
https://www.ecowatch.com/woolly-rhino-extinct-climate-change-2646983033.html?utm
Whereas it had been believed that humans
hunted the rhino to extinction, a ‘study, published in Current Biology,
notes that the rhino population stayed fairly consistent for tens of thousands
of years until 18,500 years ago. That means that people and rhinos lived
together in Northern Siberia for roughly 13,000 years before rhinos went
extinct, Science News reported.
The findings are an ominous harbinger for
large species during the current climate crisis. As EcoWatch reported, nearly
1,000 species are expected to go extinct within the next 100 years due to their
inability to adapt to a rapidly changing climate. Tigers, eagles and rhinos are
especially vulnerable.’
5. Other
Examples/evidence of species decline:
The Yangtze dolphin
(or baiji) was declared ‘functionally extinct’ in 2006. It lived in the dark
depths of the river Yangtse, and moved around by sonar. It was the victim of
‘chemical pollution, noise pollution, propeller strikes’ etc – i.e. living
among so many people.
Note
(15th June 2016, Michael Slezak): the first
recorded extinction of a mammal anywhere in the world thought to be
primarily due to anthropogenic climate change – the Bramble Cay
melomys, a small rodent from an island (Bramble Cay) in the eastern Torres
Strait, that is part of the Great Barrier Reef. The island is off the north
coast of Queensland, Australia (340metres long and 150 metres wide) which sits
three metres above sea level at most.
It was first recorded by Europeans in 1845 – sailors
shot the ‘large rats’ with bows and arrows. In 1978 it was estimated there were
a few hundred. It hasn’t been seen since 2009. The sea has risen on a number of
occasions and inundated the animals’ habitats. The area of the island above sea
level has been shrinking and vegetation cover has been declining. It lost 97%
of its habitat in 10 years.
The island is also a breeding ground for green
turtles and a number of seabirds.
One other mammal has been driven to extinction
recently, but it was wiped out by cats.
15th Dec 2017. (Patrick Barkham) Butterflies
A
study by Butterfly Conservation and the Centre for Ecology and Hydrology – ‘The
State of the UK’s Butterflies 2015’ - reports: more than three-quarters of
Britain’s 59 butterfly species have declined over the past 40 years. And we
have lost 8% of our butterfly species (Simon Barnes, NS 1-7 Sep 2017).
Chris
Packham says: this is the final warning bell – if butterflies are going
downhill like this, what’s happening to our grasshoppers, our beetles, our
solitary bees?
The
decline of some rarer butterflies (e.g. Duke of Burgundy and pearl-bordered
fritillary) has been arrested by conservation efforts. But:
The
high brown fritillary has declined 96% (in occurrence, i.e. on sites at which
it is present) since 1976, the wood white is down 88% in abundance, the white
admiral down 59% in abundance.
The
causes for ‘habitat specialist’ butterflies are clear, but why have once more
common species declined? The wall butterfly is now down in both occurrence and
abundance (in lower numbers and in fewer locations) – climate change and pesticides seem to be playing a bigger part than
previously thought. Packham says we need more funding to find out the causes,
though he thinks it is broad-spectrum
insecticides and neonicotinoids.
Some
species have moved further north, and Scotland sees more common butterflies
than England does. The same is true of moths. However, they do not always score
highly on both occurrence and abundance.
2nd July 2018. Steven Morris. The high brown fritillary, the UK’s most endangered butterfly, may
be getting a boost from the warm dry weather. Over 200 have been seen, after a
harsh winter which has helped knock back the bracken, then a warm May and June
– all of which is ideal for the caterpillars. The butterfly lays eggs singly on
leaf litter on dog violets or among moss growing on limestone outcrops. The
larvae hatch in early spring and bask on dead bracken or in short sparse
vegetation. It is only found at about 50 sites, such as Exmoor, Dartmoor and
Morecambe Bay. The larvae have feathered brown spines which make them look like
dead bracken fronds.
The things
that have worked against the butterfly include the abandonment of coppicing.
Other species which may benefit: heath fritillary, nightjar, Dartford warbler.
But the swallowtail could become
extinct soon...
30th June 2018. Patrick
Barkham.
The
swallowtail, Britain’s biggest butterfly, could become extinct within four
decades. It lives on milk parsley only, and this cannot survive in salty water.
Rising seas will turn much of the Norfolk Broads into salt marshes. With a sea
level rise of 50cm, at least 90% of the current swallowtail breeding sites will
become salt marsh. Tidal surges and ‘salination events’ also cause problems.
The Norfolk and Suffolk Broads contain 1,500 species of conservation concern,
including 66 that rely on the rivers and freshwater lakes.
In Victorian
times, marshes elsewhere in southern England were drained, leaving the Broads
as its only home. It has also become smaller and is now a subspecies.
It was
reintroduced to Wicken Fen in Cambridgeshire in the 1990s, but without success.
Experts believe it needs a wider area.
14th
June 2018. Some possibly good news: one new species of micro moth is found
every year in the UK. However, their abundance is in decline. There will be a
three-day ‘moth night’ – from 14th to 16th June -
organised by Butterfly Conservation, the Centre for Ecology and Hydrology, and
Atropos( wildlife publisher). Some new moths arrived from Australia and New
Zeeland, via the horticultural trade. Others come here as a result of climate
change. 27 of the new arrivals (out of 125 new species spotted this century)
have started to breed here. (Patrick Barkham, Guardian)
11th
April 2018. UK Butterfly Monitoring scheme reports that 2017 was the 7th
worst year, and for 2 species – grayling and grizzled skipper - the worst ever.
(Patrick Barkham) Long-term falls in population are due to habitat loss, but
recently climate change, pesticides (such as neonics) and nitrogen pollution
have been the causes. UK has 59 native species. Red admiral and comma have
increased, and targeted management plus warm spring has helped the
pearl-bordered fritillary. Food crops of the worst affected are harmed by
increased nitrogen (transport and fertilizers) which helps more vigorous
grasses to grow at expense of their food plants.
2nd
March 2017 (Patric Barkham) The
hedgehog:
The hedgehog is vanishing from Britain. There were
approximately 1.55 million in 1995 – since then they have declined by a third
in urban areas and by 75% in the countryside. They are declining by 3% a year.
Modern life seems to threaten them (dogs, cats, machines to cut grass,
bonfires, slug pellets, road traffic etc).
Main cause is habitat fragmentation. Females travel an
average of 1km every night in search of insects and earthworms, and males 2km.
They need good patches/stretches of good land connected to each other. Hugh
Warwick has written a book: Linescapes showing how roads etc cut land up. They
have been around for 15m years, mostly living near hedges. The enclosures of
the 18th and 19th centuries actually helped, and peak
time was around the second world war. The industrialisation of agriculture
changed it all.
Also a small dose of chemicals and pesticides can do serious
harm, but banning slug pellets is not as important as providing the right
landscape. But they are declining more in the countryside – badgers are seen as
the problem. The badger population is growing – the number of active setts in
England has doubled since the late 1980s. They share the same diet (earthworms,
grubs, beetles) – but if that food becomes scarce, or the badger population
becomes more dense, then the badgers prey on hedgehogs. But the changing
environment we have created leads to this situation – we need smaller fields
and thicker hedges. Between 1984 and 1990, 121,000km of British hedges were
destroyed – 22% of the total.
Unusually warm spells in winter can make the hedgehog come
out of hibernation when there isn’t food around. Milder winters also lead to
more parasites.
Hedgehogs – decline due to our building roads, etc and
clearing hedges, though badgers predating them is main cause (they would stand
a better chance if we hadn’t changed their environment) Patrick Barkham 2nd
March 2017 Guardian G2.
NB the hedgehog is a generalist, but it is still
disappearing (it is easier to understand when a specialist has lost its food
source). They may not die out completely though.
We notice hedgehogs and then do something about them – what
about the creatures we are not aware of?
11th
April 2017 Birds (Kate Lyons):
A report, by the British Trust for Ornithology, RSPB and the
Wildfowl and Wetlands Trust and others, says more than a quarter of our birds
need urgent conservation efforts to ensure their survival. 15 more birds have
been put on the ‘red list’ since the last report in 2009 (meaning they are in
danger of extinction or experienced significant decline). The total on the red
list is now 67 out of 247.
8 species are in risk of global extinction (Balearic
shearwater, aquatic warbler, common pochard, long-tailed duck, velvet scooter,
Slavonian grebe, puffin and turtle dove).
Causes: land use change (afforestation [? Deforestation?},
drainage of fields for farmland) – also an increase of predators (crows,
foxes), and global climate change that affects migration.
The curlew has declined by 64% from 1970 to 2014 due to
habitat loss. The UK supports up to 27% of the global curlew population.
Some species have increased: bittern and nightjar have moved
from red to amber, and 22 species have moved from amber to green. The golden
eagle has increased by 15% since 2003, and the red kite has been reintroduced,
and is now on the green list. These had been threatened by people protecting
grouse moors, and others taking eggs.
3rd
Aug. 2019: Turtle Dove. More than 40
million birds have disappeared from Britain in 50 years. (Patrick Barkham):
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2019/aug/03/silencing-natural-world-can-turtle-dove-be-saved
As recently as the 60s, there were 125,000 pairs in Britain. Between 1967 and
2016, their numbers plummeted by 98%. Each year, population estimates are
revised downwards: there may be fewer than 2,000 pairs left. Most worryingly,
there is no agreement about how we can reverse the decline.
lowland Britain – the turtle dove’s home
– is one of the most nature-depleted landscapes in the world. More than half of
Britain’s plant and animal species are in decline and one in 10 is severely
threatened. More than 40 million birds have vanished from this country in 50
years.
It has been affected badly by recent
droughts in Africa and the Mediterranean penchant for shooting migrating birds
each spring and autumn (traditionally for food, but now more for fun). It has
been estimated that 3 million turtle doves are shot each year. While EU law
bans the hunting of birds during periods of breeding and migration, the
turtle dove is still shot in many countries during autumn. In addition,
BirdLife International estimates that 600,000 are killed illegally each year.
[In Britain] Turtle doves eat mostly
grains, living on wild plant and weed seeds. Since the 50s, Britain has destroyed almost all its
wildflower meadows, while chemical pesticides have removed arable weeds.
[At harvest there is also hardly any
spillage now] We have also removed hedgerows where they nest.
The Knepp estate has 20 calling males
and is one of the few places where numbers are increasing.
23rd
Oct 2019: Mullion Island – off the
Cornish coast – uninhabited, and you need a permit to land there – only
conservationists visit to check on sea birds. Found thousands of elastic bands -
probably brought by birds that mistook them for worms – nearby is a place that
grows flowers and uses the bands to tie the bunches... Probably this has been
going on for ‘decades’ The island is home to one of the largest colonies of
great black-backed gulls in Cornwall, with up to 70 nests each summer, also
about 50 cormorant nests. Ornithologists from West Cornwall Ringing Group found
the elastic bands. Gull [populations are declining and the herring gull is on
the UK red list for birds of conservation concern. (Steven Morris)
June
2020: a technology solution to fishing problems (especially by-catch) is not
enough: https://theconversation.com/catch-22-technology-can-help-solve-fishings-environmental-issues-but-risks-swapping-one-problem-for-another
Aug
2019: the oceans. Gillian Anderson,
Guardian 19th Aug. https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2019/aug/19/crunch-point-oceans-treaty.
Governments are drafting a global ocean treaty in New York...
The science is clear. Oceans are warming
and becoming more acidic, which is killing coral reefs and other fragile
ecosystems. Plastic pollution is choking marine life and 90% of large fish such
as sharks, swordfish and tuna have been
hunted from our seas. The lack of effective governance in international waters
has left them open to exploitation from fisheries and extractive industries
such as oil and gas. Now a new threat is emerging. Leading scientists have
warned that our oceans face severe and irreversible harm from deep-sea mining, with companies
queuing up to extract metals and minerals from the seabed.
Aug.
2019. Salmon Farm threatens island
ecology:
https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2019/aug/19/national-trust-objects-to-plans-for-big-salmon-farm-off-hebridean-isle
National Trust Scotland objects to Mowi, world’s largest aqua-culture company,
plans to install eight super-sized fish pens close to Canna. To be stocked with
2,500 tonnes of salmon. But there is a rare fan mussel, seal haul-outs,
vulnerable sea birds. Even though it is an organic farm, holding less fish than
a conventional one, it would still discharge as much organic waste (faces,
uneaten fish meal, dead fish) as a town the size of Dumfries each year.
July
2019. 45% of the marine ecosystems on
the coast of Australia – that is, 5,000 miles - have been damaged in the last 7
years (2011 – 2017) by extreme climate events such as heat-waves, floods and
drought. Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation (CSIRO).
In some cases the damage is irreversible. It can take 15 years to recover from
such impacts, and since these extreme events are getting more likely, some
areas e.g. kelp canopies off the Western Australia coast, will not recover.
Animals that feed on kelp are affected, and then the whole ecosystem.
28th March 2018, Matthew Taylor: Holland and Barrett
has agreed to remove krill-based
products such as Omega 3 from its shelves, after activists sent 40,000 emails
in 24 hours and put protest stickers on products in its shops. Campaigners are
calling for Boots and others to follow suit. Boots say that their brands are in
line with Marine Stewardship Council products from sustainable sources. Last week Greenpeace campaigners boarded a
Ukrainian trawler. (See Facebook https://www.facebook.com/greenpeaceaustraliapacific/videos/10155831450743300/?utm_term=EML2&bucket=Oceans-Antarctic&source=ca_Oceans-Antarctic__
15th Feb 2018, Matthew Taylor – climate change and
industrial fishing together are threatening the krill population. George Watters, lead scientist for the US delegation
to the Convention for the Conservation of Antarctic Marine Living Resources
(CCAMLR) warns that the penguin population could drop by almost a third by the
end of the century because of changes in the krill biomass. (Published in Plos
One). Some areas of krill could decrease by 40% in size. Ocean warming is the
main problem, but fishing also affects it. Krill feed on algae and are a food
source for whales, penguins and seals – they also remove CO2 from the
atmosphere when they eat near the surface, and then excrete at lower levels.
Krill populations have declined by 80% since the 1970s. Krill is fished for
health products, and the industry is growing by 12% a year.
There is a
campaign to turn 700,000 sq miles into a sanctuary, protecting wildlife and
banning all fishing, in the Weddell Sea. Krill fishing companies say they are
only taking 0.4% of the estimated biomass around the peninsula.
10th May 2016 (Damian Carrington) Plants:
One in five of the world’s plant species are threatened with
extinction, putting food and medicines at risk, according to The State of the
World’s Plants, a report produced by Kew Gardens. There are 390,000 species of
plants, and more than 31,000 are used by people.
Of the latter, 57% are used to derive drugs. More than 5,500
are human foods and 1,400 have ‘social uses’ viz. Tobacco and cannabis.
Main
causes:
-
destruction of habitats for farming – 31% (e.g. palm oil production and cattle
ranching); deforestation for timber – 21%; deforestation for buildings and
infrastructure – 13%; climate change – 4% (but this is likely to grow).
Note also that breeding crops over a long time to produce
high yields means that other genes are lost, such as those that help fight
pests and cope with changes in climate. Bananas, sorghum and aubergines now
have very little genetic diversity and are therefore vulnerable to new threats.
Finding wild relatives is the way to get genetic diversity back.
Moreover, more than 5,000 species have invaded foreign
countries, causing billions of dollars of damage each year. Japanese knotweed
costs UK £165m a year to control.
Oct
2017 Michael McCarthy Guardian 21st Oct 2017. https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2017/oct/18/warning-of-ecological-armageddon-after-dramatic-plunge-in-insect-numbers
Scientists tell of alarm at huge fall in flying insects... the biomass of flying insects in Germany has dropped by 75% since 1989. Insects are vital plant pollinators, and the food base of thousands and thousands of food chains. Britain’s farmland birds have declined by more than half because of loss of insects. The grey partridge and spotted flycatcher have declined by more than 95%, and the red-backed shrike is extinct.
We have not noticed partly because we don’t like insects and
partly because we don’t (can’t perhaps) count them. In Britain alone there are
about 24,500 insect species.
Two-thirds of all species on Earth are insects. They have
been present on earth for about 350 million years (humans for 130,000). There
are more kinds of beetle than of all plants.
Letter in Guardian, Oct 2017: Game and Wildlife Conservation
Trust: insecticide use is responsible for declining numbers. Agri-environmental
measures are available through the Countryside Stewardship Scheme: conservation
headlands (low-input cereal headlands), wildbird seed mix. (Measured less
decline (35%) in Sussex than found in Germany (87%), but high decline (72%) in
insects (and 45% of invertebrates) that are chick feed for declining farmland
birds. Concern about post-Brexit policies...
2018: Insects and
invertebrates have declined most dramatically, by 59% since 1970. Thus
pollination, healthy soil etc are damaged. ‘They are about the most important
things out there’ says Eaton.
‘The
new data was gathered in nature reserves across Germany but has implications
for all landscapes dominated by agriculture, the researchers said.
The
cause of the huge decline is as yet unclear, although the destruction of wild
areas and widespread use of pesticides are the most likely factors and climate
change may play a role.
“Insects make up about two-thirds of all life on Earth [but]
there has been some kind of horrific decline,” said Prof Dave Goulson of Sussex
University, UK, and part of the team behind the new study. “We appear to be
making vast tracts of land inhospitable to most forms of life, and are
currently on course for ecological Armageddon. If we lose the insects then
everything is going to collapse.”
Flies, beetles and wasps are also predators and decomposers,
controlling pests and cleaning up the place generally.
The research, published in
the journal Plos One,
is based on the work of dozens of amateur entomologists across Germany who
began using strictly standardised ways of collecting insects in 1989. Special
tents called malaise traps were used to capture more than 1,500 samples of all
flying insects at 63 different nature reserves.’
If the insects leave the reserves and go on to farmland,
then they won’t find anything much to eat, and they may be exposed to
pesticides, says Dave Goulson.
Insects: (Damian Carrington G 2nd April 2019):
Woodlands
and open grasslands are both affected – woodlands could have protected insects
from rising temperatures. Aphids are emerging a month earlier, and birds are
laying eggs a week earlier. Animals then become ‘out of synch’ with their prey.
On farms, aphids are attacking younger plants because they come earlier, and
young plants have not developed immunity.
In farmland,
however, insects and birds were emerging later in the spring – perhaps because
of changes to habitat: loss of wild areas, and changing crop types, along with
declining food availability.
Populations
of birds that rely on insects fell by 13% across Europe from 1990-2015, and by 28%
in Denmark (which was a case study).
Researchers
are increasingly concerned about dramatic drops in populations of insects,
which underpin much of nature. In February it was said that these falls could
lead to a “catastrophic
collapse of nature’s ecosystems ”, and in March there was further evidence of widespread loss of pollinating insects in recent
decades in Britain.
Other
studies, from Germany and Puerto Rico, have shown falling
numbers in the last 25 to 35 years. Another showed butterflies in the
Netherlands had declined by at least 84% over the last
130 years.
In February,
when the weather was unusually warm, rooks were nesting, ladybirds mating and
migratory swallows appearing all a month ahead of schedule.
2019:
from Plantlife: road verges are home to 45% of our total flora and are the only
place species such as wood calamint and fen ragwort grow.
2020:
https://theconversation.com/insects-worldwide-study-reveals-widespread-decline-since-1925-137089
- report by Stuart Reynolds, Emeritus Professor of Biology, University of Bath.
‘... a new study has
offered the clearest indication yet of how insects all over the world are
faring. The researchers studied data on the numbers and total weight of insects
and arachnids (spiders and mites) sampled in 166 long-term surveys. Each of
these lasted more than ten years and recorded insects at 1,676 sites in 41
countries on five continents. The earliest record was from 1925, and the most
recent from 2018, although most records were dated from 1986 or later.
They
estimate that land-based insects, which make up the majority of species, have
been declining at nearly 1% per year, or almost 9% per decade. But during the
same period, the small proportion of insects which live in freshwater
experienced a 1% annual increase, or just over 11% per decade.
As ecologist
E.O. Wilson once observed, if you take away the “little
things that run the world” then most of the creatures occupying niches
further up the food chain will disappear too, and that includes humans.
While the picture of widespread
insect declines is becoming a little clearer, we still don’t know the cause.
The new study found some evidence that the growth of cities and towns nearby
was detrimental to insect abundance. Perhaps surprisingly, there was little
evidence for insect populations being harmed by neighbouring intensive
agriculture, but this might have been because those sites were already depleted
of insects when the study began.
There was also no evidence for
climate change affecting insect abundance.’
These conclusions – or rather the
lack of conclusion about causes – seem
to me to differ from other sources...
8. Elizabeth Kolbert:
The Sixth Extinction. As well as tracing how individual
species have become extinct, she makes a number of interesting points.
First: what helps a species to survive is adaptability – but
what helps it adapt varies according to its environment. At one time, being
large and strong was valuable in fighting off predators, acquiring food etc.
Now it is precisely these ‘megafauna’ that have become the most vulnerable:
this is because they have not been able to combat humans, who are quicker and
smarter.
Second, even if only a small number of a large species of
large mammal is killed, they could die out over time when another factor is
taken into account: their reproductive rate. Thus an elephant’s gestation
period is 22 months, and they only have one offspring at a time (no
twins!). Thus even if only a small
number of mammoths, for example, or great sloths, were killed – over several
centuries the species would decline and then disappear, as it could not replace
the population quickly enough.
Third, extinctions can happen gradually, as humans are not
likely to notice what is happening over such a long period of time – especially
if they could find alternative sources of food. In North America, while mammoth
numbers dropped, the white-tailed deer (which has a relatively high
reproductive rate) survived to feed the population. ‘Mammoth became a luxury
food, something you could enjoy once in a while, like a large truffle’!
Being able to change what you eat is therefore an advantage
when it comes to surviving the present crisis (specialising in your diet makes
an animal more vulnerable).
In the current global warming scenario, those creatures that
can adapt to the increasing heat – or move! – will be most likely to survive,
as will those creatures that have already learned to live with humans, such as
rats! And of while we are the most numerous big animal on earth... the next in
line are the animals we have created through breeding to feed and serve us’
(quote from Gaia Vince reviewing the book cited next).
Expressing a different point of view to Elizabeth Kolbert,
and in fact it seems to me running against the dominant view, Chris D Thomas of
York University has written a book: Inheritors of the Earth: How Nature is
Thriving in an Age of Extinction... he points out that while everyone has
focussed on the widespread extinctions (which he does not deny are happening),
we find: immigrant species (adding to the biodiversity of a location – provided
they do not destroy native species), newly emerging hybrids and subspecies
exhibiting freshly evolved adaptations. He says that humans have increased the
number of species existing everywhere by taking them with us, and the vast
majority of introduced species do no harm. Controversially, he warns us that
‘conservation’ may be misguided (e.g. the sparrow is not ‘native’ to this
country but came from the Asian Steppes – it was a pest in Tudor times, but now
is protected even though there are millions of them!). Re-wilding may also be
the wrong approach if it is guided simply by nostalgia: everything has changed
over time, so which ‘past’ do we want to return to? Or should we welcome the
changes that are happening, since – as Thomas argues – there could be even
greater biodiversity in future.
I would, however, agree with the reviewer I have quoted
(Gaia Vince, 2nd Sep 2017) – there doesn’t seem to be much point in speculating
about very distant futures: ‘Come back in a million years [says Thomas] and we
might be looking at several million new species whose existence can be
attributed to humans.’
Secondly, the extinctions we are faced with are happening
over a very rapid time-scale, compared to ‘normal’ evolutionary change. As with
climate change itself, we should be concerned about this – and about ‘tipping
points’, beyond which change is not only undesirable but irreversible.
Finally, as Kolbert points out, there are reasons why some
species and not others are surviving, (rats and not the great apes): and I
don’t feel that Thomas has thought about this argument or the implications of
it.
Update, Jan 2020 (from The Conversation) by Arne Mooers:
rate of decline of birds is rapid, but there is room for hope because
conservation efforts do reduce the rate of decline/extinction. But intervention
needs to be early.
https://theconversation.com/bird-species-are-facing-extinction-hundreds-of-times-faster-than-previously-thought
Further arguments:
John Burton of the World Land Trust says: ‘We’ll always have
rats and cockroaches and their like for company. Which is not inappropriate.’
It is ironic that the species that will survive are those we have always
despised. They will survive because they have adapted to live with humans...
Meanwhile we are killing off numbers of species because we think of ourselves
as superior...
9. Possible solutions
(a) Individual, voluntary:
(i)
Solutions concerning plants: (Alys Fowler, 30th April 2017, RHS:
Avoid
using peat
Grow
a diverse range of pollinator-friendly plants - Bee-friendly flowers have less
petals
Save
seeds
Compost
kitchen and garden waste
Avoid
chemicals
Make
spaces for wildlife
Love
your soil: don’t mess with it too much, add organic matter (preferably compost)
Create
a variety of trees, shrubs, perennials, annuals, ground cover, something in
flower for most of the year
Use a water butt.
(ii) Good news: people are aware and rescue hedgehogs. We
can check before strimming long grass or starting a bonfire, leave patches of
dead leaves, long grass or log piles. Best of all, make a CD-sized hole in your
fence to let them travel through.
(a) (iii) Organised conservation
17th Aug. 2020: Trump brings bad news - https://www.nytimes.com/2020/08/17/climate/alaska-oil-drilling-anwr.html?
‘Overturning five decades of protections
for the largest remaining stretch of wilderness in the United States, the Trump
administration on Monday finalized its plan to open up part of the Arctic National
Wildlife Refuge in Alaska to oil and gas development.
The decision sets the stage
for what is expected to be a fierce legal battle over the fate of this vast,
remote Alaska habitat.’
13th April
2020
(Adam Welz). African penguins gather on Boulders beach on South Africa’s Cape
peninsula because it is cut off from land-based predators – a ‘pseudo island’.
But this penguin – Spheniscus demersus is heading into extinction. In the early
20th century there were about 1.5 – 3 million; in 1956 there were 300,000,
and last year 13,300 breeding pairs. The main problem is the decline in small
fish – sardines and anchovies – as a result of overfishing. Ocean heating has
also pushed small pelagic fish away. The penguins tend to want to be near
cooler water. Nesting penguins cannot travel more than 25 miles from the nest
when seeking food. Conservation efforts involve setting up another pseudo
island on the coast near to sardine stocks. Christina Hagen of Bird Life South
Africa has even put up concrete fake penguins to attract birds to breed.
WWF. (Guardian
30th Dec 2019). Tanya Steele is the first female chief executive.
The organisations support base grew by 23% last year – partly because of XR.
Aims: decarbonising the worlds, ending deforestation, reforming the food
system. They have 7,662 staff across 83 offices, and 3,000 projects underway at
any one time. Covers advocacy, campaigning, research, fundraising and
communication. UK HQ is in Woking. ‘We still have to show milestones or it
could be disheartening.’ They recently
added Tesco to their portfolio of commercial partners, aiming to halve the
environmental footprint of the average shopper’s basket. They also work with
John West to reduce the environmental impacts of fishing, and have been
criticised for working with Coca Cola on usage of water.
In 2019 it spent £54.5m on charitable activities – members and donations provide £34.9m of its £66.3m income. Corporate donations and sponsorships: £9.4m ‘Fundamentally this is about protecting both these businesses’ supply chains in the future and much of the planet beyond their lifetime.’
Red Squirrels: 2015: http://www.bbc.com/earth/story/20150924-how-conservation-is-saving-our-red-squirrels?
15th Feb 2017 (Zoological
Society of London): a group of 14 scimitar-horned oryx (type of antelope) have
been reintroduced to a nature reserve in Chad (the size
of Scotland!), by the Sahara desert where they used to live. (Driven
to extinction during civil unrest 1980s and 1990s). They were bred in captivity
in zoos including Whipsnade.
17th Feb 2017 (Hannah Devlin,
Guardian science correspondent): scientists are trying to ‘resurrect’ the
woolly mammoth (by splicing mammoth DNA – preserved in the ice – into
an elephant genome). Woolly mammoths could help prevent tundra permafrost from
melting as they punch through snow and allow cold air to come in. A simulate
ecosystem study showed that mammoths in Siberia could bring about a
drop in temperature of up to 20 degrees C. In the summer they knock down trees
and help the grass grow.
Observer, 15th
April 2018, review by Alex Preston of Britain: Our Place: can we save Britain’s wildlife before it is too late? By
Mark Cocker. Argues that despite the British love of the countryside etc,
we are destroying our wildlife: quoting the 2013 State of Nature report (by 25
British environmental organisations), of the 3,148 species studied, 60% had
declined in the last 50 years; 31% had declined badly and 600 were threatened
with extinction. We lost 44m birds between 1996 and 2008. We have lost 99% of
our wildflower meadows, half of our ancient woodland, three-quarters of our
heathland, three-quarters of our ponds. Yet
there are 5m members of the National Trust, 1.2m in the RSPB, 800,000 in
various wildlife trusts. These organisations are afraid to campaign (and the NT
placates the landed aristocracy). The villains of the story are industrial
agri-business, moneyed landowners, and the politicians who defend their
interest (mostly conservative of course). Monocultures and grouse moors are
destroying the natural countryside.
Solutions for the UK:
Paul
Wilkinson of the Wildlife Trust which helped write the 2013 State of nature
report: we need a 25-year Plan for Nature [check] to stop the loss of wildlife
and secure its recovery within a generation.
The
government should introduce regulation to ring-fence habitats from farming, and
prevent the use of the most harmful pesticides. But recent cuts to the budget
for the environment have not helped.
Recommendations
for less frequent cutting of road verges – drawn up by charity Plantlife, and
backed by highways agencies, Natural England et al: cutting verges only twice a
year (instead of three or four times) could lead to there being 400bn more
flowers.
97%
of wildflower meadows in Britain have been destroyed in less than a century.
Verges are wildlife corridors – but there has been a 20% drop in floral
diversity on road verges since 1990, partly because of too frequent cutting.
Clare Warburton of Natural England says: ‘nature on the road verge does a
number of jobs like cleaning the air, storing carbon, pollinating crops and
providing sustainable drainage.’
Globally: ecological/sustainable tourism to preserve the biodiversity: honey,
mushrooms to generate income locally e.g. Mozambique needs to be legally
designated as a community conservation area.
(i) Re-wilding
initiatives: (Observer 13th May 2015, p 31 Tracy McVeigh): attempts
are being made to return wild animals (and plants etc) to areas from which they
have died out. Examples: reindeer (extinct since the 12th century,
reintroduced 1952, especially in Cairngorms) black Grouse (reintroduced in
Derbyshire in 2003), wild horses, wild boar have been re-establishing
themselves for several decades (but these have escaped from farms?).
(Observer 26th June
2016 Jessica Aldred): dormice being
reintroduced to Yorkshire Dales National Park.
They need managed
(coppiced) woodland and hedgerows – England lost 50% of its hedgerows
between 1946 and 1993 from an estimated 500,000 miles to 236,000. Dormice need
to be off the ground, so drystone walls and woods are essential.
This community it
is hoped will link up with another released three miles away. A good species to
get people involved with conservation, and what’s good for them is also good
for birds, bats and butterflies.
Beavers have improved
water (flood management etc) and biodiversity in Devon. 17th
Feb 2020 (Patrick Barkham): beavers cut pollution, ease floods and boost
wildlife according to a five-year study of wild-living animals in Devon. They
were hunted to extinction 400 years ago. Study overseen by Prof Richard Baxter
of Exeter Uni concludes that their benefits on the River Otter outweigh small
costs such as flooded farmland. Funds were raised by Devon Wildlife. There are
at least eight pairs (from two in 2015) – one family has slowed the flow
upstream of East Budleigh which is flood-prone. They filter pollutants
including manure and fertiliser from the fields. New wetlands have benefited
water voles, dippers, and teal etc. There were 37% more fish in pools created
by beaver dams, and trout have been recorded leaping over beaver dams.
Some potato
fields were flooded, and orchards were at risk of the trees being gnawed but
active management (e.g. wire fencing round trees, pipes to increase the flow of
water dealt with this. The only problem is that the downstream people who
benefit are separate from the upstream farmers who lose water storage.
Government has
recently approved dozens of schemes for wild beavers to be placed in large
fenced areas in valleys. A scheme is needed to help adversely affected farmers.
Next is to reintroduce them to rivers.
Wolves
could manage deer, and have an important role to play in ecosystems:
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2018/apr/08/wolves-scotland-reintroduction-lister-alladale
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2018/jan/26/harmless-or-vicious-hunter-the-uneasy-return-of-europes-wolves
Sea eagles were returned to
the Inner Hebrides (but endangered sheep...).
The world’s largest marine
park has been created in the Ross Sea off Antarctica – widely seen as
Earth’s last intact marine ecosystem. (29th Oct 2016 Michael Slezak)
(George Monbiot on re-wilding the seas, 4th Feb
2017): ocean ecologists want 30% of Britain’s seas protected – we have achieved
on 0.01% (off Lundy Island in the Bristol Channel, Lamlash Bay off the Isle of
Arran, Flamborough Head in East Yorkshire). ‘When you establish reserves in
which fish and shellfish can breed and grow to large sizes, [you get a]
‘spillover effect’ – fish migrating to the surrounding waters’ – so the policy
actually helps the fishing industry.
‘Declaring areas of sea off-limits to the fishing
industry would also revitalise other coastal industries [attracting] divers,
whale watchers and sport fishers – all of whom tend to bring in more income and
jobs than commercial fishing.’
Monbiot says that ‘a rich ecosystem includes many
different species of fish, tuna, ‘blue, porbeagle, thresher, mako and
occasional great white sharks’, and behind, within sight of the shore, fin
whales and sperm whales...’ as described by Oliver Goldsmith in the late 18th century.
He saw: ‘[fish] in distinct columns of five and six miles in length and three
or four broad.’
Protection of rivers: payments in
lieu of fines.
Businesses are paying ‘enforcement undertakings’ as
an alternative to prosecutions – Environment Agency says the money will go to
charities and projects to clean up rivers etc and for community groups to
invest in public parkland. Northumbrian Water has paid £375,000 for pumping
sewage into a river, and Anglian water has paid £100,000 twice for 2 pollution
incidents which killed fish. 31st Jan 2017Press
Association
(d) More controversial re-wilding: Lynx UK hopes
to introduce six Eurasian lynxes, imported from Sweden,
into Kielder Forest (a nature reserve in Northumberland). Lynx
was last seen across Britain in AD700. They would reinvigorate the
biggest forested area in Britain and control its herbivore population
– their main food is roe deer, which is damaging the growth of wild flowers and
plants, and preventing the regeneration of trees. They have been successfully
re-introduced in northern Germany. Dr Ian Convery (Univ of Cumbria) says
we have lost significantly more nature over the long term than the global
average and we are amongst the most nature-depleted countries in the world.
Three benefits: restoring ecosystems, controlling deer, attracting tourists (as
happened in Germany).
(e) Make ecocide a crime: July 2019. Letter (Guardian) from Greenpeace board member and President of Campaign to ban trophy hunting: ecocide should be put on a par with genocide, as argued by the late Polly Higgins (environmental lawyer).
Another letter argues that occasional
burning of heather (for grouse shooting!) encourages the growth of sphagnum
moss – better than carpeting with trees...
(f) Animal
rights. Sophie
McBain in New Statesman interviews Steve Wise, founder of the Nonhuman Rights
Project. Quotes Peter Singer. India’s supreme court has ruled all animals
should have constitutional and legal rights (2014), a judge in Argentina
ordered a chimpanzee to be released using habeas corpus (2016), and in 2017
Colombia’s supreme court ordered a bear to be released under the same
principle. Bees and wasps can recognise faces; octupuses use tools; grey
parrots have vocabularies with hundreds of words; elephants can recognise
themselves (in a mirror).
https://www.newstatesman.com/.../case-man-vs-beast-fight-nonhuman-rights
As argued earlier, the point about biodiversity is that
ecosystems have more components than they ‘need’ to make the system function –
they have a ‘redundancy’. Dicks says:
‘The argument in ecology is that the redundancy is needed for the
long-term resilience of the system.’ So it’s possible that the whole system
will collapse even if only a proportion of the existing species goes extinct.
Peter Barnes (e.g. https://centerforneweconomics.org/publications/capitalism-the-commons-and-divine-right/)
says that some people say that this demonstrates the ‘tragedy of the commons’:
‘if I don’t grab it someone else will’. But the cause of this, surely, is that
we have been encouraged to only value individual property? We have polluted the
air, and the rivers and the sea because we don’t see them as ‘ours’.
‘In my mind,
the great challenge for the twenty-first century is to make the commons
visible, to give it proper reverence, and to translate that reverence into
property rights and legal institutions that are on a par with those we
currently give to private property.’
He argues: ‘let me dispel two
myths that have obstructed clear thinking about the commons for many years. One
is the myth that all commons are inherently self-destructive. This myth is
largely the result of a 1968 essay called “The Tragedy of the Commons” by the
late biologist Garrett Hardin. Hardin assumed that there is basically only one
kind of commons: the unfenced pasture or waste dump with no management system,
areas to which individuals can add animals and wastes freely and at will with no limitation. As
a result destruction can result.
What Hardin overlooked is that there are many kinds of commons and many ways to
manage them. For example, you can put a fence around a pasture or you can put a
fence around a waste dump and charge a dumping fee; you can have fishing and
hunting limits and sell licenses. There is no tragedy if a commons is treated
properly.
The other myth is that a commons
must always be free and open to anyone who wants to use it. In an uncrowded
world, this would be the ideal way to run a
commons, but in a crowded world, such as the one we now inhabit, we must not
allow unlimited dumping into the air, the water, and the soil. We must put
limits on the uses of many of our commons: on the noises we allow into the
shared spaces around us, on hunting and fishing, cutting of trees, posting of
billboards. We can charge tolls for parking on city streets, for using
congested highways, and for driving into the center of cities such as London.
All these are legitimate management tools to protect and preserve different
kinds of commons.’
As I see it, the great task of
the twenty-first century is to build a new and vital common sector that can
resist enclosure and externalization by the market, protect the planet, and
share the fruits of our common inheritances more equitably than is now the
case.
Just as the market is populated
by profit-maximizing corporations, so too the common sector needs to be
populated by commons-preserving trusts. These trusts should be endowed with
property rights that are equal to those of corporations. Their beneficiaries
should be all citizens equally, as well as future generations and, at times,
the larger biotic community. Their trustees and managers should be legally
accountable to these beneficiaries, and their finances should be completely
transparent.
There are many models for such
trusts, including Community Land Trusts, which were pioneered by Bob Swann, the
founder of the Schumacher Center for a New Economics, and Susan Witt, its
executive director.
Elsewhere [check?] Barnes talks about how it all comes back
to population: since 1950 the world’s population has tripled; in 2016 we
reached 7.4 billion. As Lynn Dicks says, world population is increasing by 75
million a year... Barnes points out that energy and water use have both
increased by five times. ‘Human population growth is the principal driver of
the extinction crisis. There are not separate crises going on: it’s all linked.
The loss of biodiversity and bio-abundance inevitably ensues.’
Tony Juniper says: ‘solutions are linked. It’s about
sustainable economies – if we continue with economic growth, we will trash
ecosystems and the soil. We need to end the extinction, reduce CO2 emissions
and protect soils.’
(*)
There have been five major extinctions in earth’s
history (from Tori Blakeman 10th Sep 2017):
Ordovician-Silurian:
443 million years ago. Really two events,
separated by hundreds of thousands of years – most life was in the sea at this
stage, and 85% of it was wiped out.
Late
Devonian: 359 million years ago. Scientists
believe that the seas became devoid of oxygen, and shallow seas and reefs were
worst affected. It took more than 100 million years for reefs to recover.
Permian-Triassic: 252 million years ago. 96% of marine species and 70% of land species were wiped out. Possible
causes are massive volcanic eruptions in Siberia causing global warming.
Triassic-Jurassic:
200 million years ago. Roughly half of all
species were lost, allowing dinosaurs to flourish, but
plants were not affected.
Cretaceous-Tertiary:
65 million years ago. A giant asteroid caused
dinosaurs and many other organisms to perish. Mammals then evolved.
25th
May 2019, from 38Degrees:
[1]
Huffington Post: Recolouring The Countryside - Why We Need To Put Meadows Back
On The Map:
https://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/entry/recolouring-the-countryside-why-we-need-to-put-meadows_uk_5a96d715e4b062df100e865c
ITV News: Wildflowers and insects under threat due to vanishing meadows,
experts warn:
https://www.itv.com/news/2018-07-06/wildflowers-and-insects-under-threat-due-to-vanishing-meadows-experts-warn/
The Guardian: Plummeting insect numbers 'threaten collapse of nature':
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2019/feb/10/plummeting-insect-numbers-threaten-collapse-of-nature
[2] The Guardian: World's food supply under 'severe threat' from loss of
biodiversity:
https://www.theguardian.com/global-development/2019/feb/21/worlds-food-supply-under-severe-threat-from-loss-of-biodiversity
BBC News: UN: Growing threat to food from decline in biodiversity:
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-47308235
[3] BBC News: Nature crisis: Humans 'threaten 1m species with extinction':
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-48169783
New Scientist: Destruction of nature is as big a threat to humanity as climate
change:
https://www.newscientist.com/article/2201697-destruction-of-nature-is-as-big-a-threat-to-humanity-as-climate-change/