The State of the World
Over the last half century, the number of humans on the planet has doubled while the population of all other vertebrates has halved. About one-third of amphibians and most primates are in danger of extinction. The total population of birds has fallen by five billion or more.
The normal background rate of extinction is between one and five species per year, but we are currently losing 1,000 to 10,000 each year. Even the most common species are heavily impacted, their abundance obscuring their steady decline. Mankind has brought the whole planet to the brink of disaster. The reasons are not difficult to find.
It is not just the growth in human numbers but the extravagant and wasteful manner in which we consume resources. It is our blatant disregard for the future. It is the massive clearance of forest without replacement. It is overfishing while discarding bycatch and killing seabirds pointlessly. It is the deliberate destruction of animals over and above what is needed for survival. In this way, we rapaciously consume the equivalent of 1.7 earths each year; by 2050 it will be three.
Our Impact on the Environment
We have introduced rats, cats, pigs, cattle, rabbits and other alien species to fragile island ecosystems, adding further to the destruction of native wildlife. We pollute with toxins, oil, metals, plastic and poisons and we release greenhouse gases resulting in climate change and global warming at an unprecedented level. Over the past 50 years, the average global temperature has increased at the fastest rate in recorded history and there is no sign of it slowing down.
Projections are alarming and the first consequences are already with us. Glaciers are retreating, cyclones and hurricanes are becoming more powerful and deadly, coastal erosion is threatening island communities. Many plant and animal species are threatened with extinction, due to habitat loss and degradation as well as over exploitation.
Conservationists have identified the coronavirus pandemic as very likely caused by humanity’s disregard for nature and disrespect for animals. It is our disdain for nature and our disrespect of the animals we share the planet with that caused this pandemic. We destroy forests, forcing different species of animals into closer proximity thereby passing from one animal to another and infecting humans through closer contact. Wild animals are hunted for food, sold in markets or reared on intensive farms, cruelly crowded together. These are the conditions that create the environment for viruses to jump from animals across the species barrier to humans.
Protecting the Environment
Forests need protection because trees remove carbon dioxide and pollutants from the air we breathe and provide habitats for birds and other wildlife. Yet the world has lost 80 percent of its forest cover in the last 50 years and destruction continues at an alarming rate. Wetlands need protection as stores of water and filters to remove impurities that can cause heart and lung diseases. Yet the majority of wetlands are being filled in to make way for housing and agriculture. Lakes and rivers need protection for their precious reserves of water, but these are thoughtlessly polluted, diverted for irrigation and drained. The Aral Sea was once the fourth largest lake in the world but it has shrunk since the 1960s after the rivers that fed it were diverted for agriculture projects to barely 10 percent of its original size. The fishing industry has been devastated, bringing hardship and poverty to a once prosperous region.
Even the vast and mighty oceans are not safe without protection. Overfishing is threatening fish stocks and leading to massive declines in seabird numbers. Virtually every piece of plastic ever created still exists and most of it finds its way to the ocean. It has been estimated that by 2050, there will be more plastic by weight in the oceans than fish. Plastic kills annually more than one million seabirds, 100,000 marine mammals and 1,000 turtles.
Our Role as a Species
It is a moral obligation of mankind to protect the environment to combat the destruction of ecosystems caused by human activities. More than that, without environmental protection, we threaten the survival of the human race, as humans are a part of nature. Every species is dependent on every other species for survival, directly or indirectly. A threat to the environment is a threat to mankind from ecological imbalance and the collapse of natural balances.
Genocide is a crime, yet mankind is committing genocide on the rest of nature. Protection is vital to alleviate this situation before it is too late. Conservation of wildlife and biodiversity protects and preserves the environment for future generations while maintaining a healthy and efficient ecosystem. Nature is our biggest ally in the fight to combat global warming, and through environmental protection we can maximise nature’s contribution to avoiding a catastrophe. Everything from oceans to forests has its part to play and it is vital we do all that we can to protect our greatest friend, nature itself.
Realisation of the impending apocalypse has been slow and vested interests have sought to spread doubt and confusion that mankind is not necessarily the source of the problem. However, the scale and rapid rate of change are no longer deniable. If we are to avoid the worst effects of climate change, we need to do much more and we have to act now.
Importance of Cataloguing Birds
There is a pleasure in identifying bird species and knowing their names. As an old Chinese proverb goes, “The beginning of wisdom is to call things by their right names”.
The diversity of birds means that compiling a definitive catalogue is a complicated exercise. Is it worth the effort? Do we really need to give every species a different name? The answer is simple: this is essential if we want to protect their remarkable biodiversity.
The immense variety of species is a part of the enjoyment of observing birds and the beauty of being a birdwatcher is that birds are everywhere. No matter where you live, where you visit, birds are around you. You can be a hundred miles from the sea or a hundred miles from land, you can be in a wilderness or an urban environment, in a forest or a desert. Birds will be your companions.
Taxonomists have constructed a framework that allows us to understand and document every species and manage our knowledge of them. This is essential to understanding species especially at a time when Earth is facing an extinction crisis.
Cataloguing birds tells us how each species fits into the environment. Without the understanding provided by cataloguing birds, it would be like the world’s biggest supermarket, trying to do business with any idea of the stock of individual items and little idea of its range of goods, what they do and what are their values.
The Future
DNA is giving us new and sometimes astonishing insights. For example, it was long assumed that falcons were closely related to hawks and eagles. After all, they are all aerial predators, they are all birds of prey. However, it turns out that falcons are more closely related to parrots. Falcons are like parrots that developed a taste for meat and the life of a lone hunter. Alternatively, parrots can be viewed as falcons that prefer a vegetarian diet and a more social lifestyle!
Tropicbirds are potentially even more surprising. Tropicbirds were long placed with other seabirds in Pelecaniformes on the basis of shared anatomical features, but genetic evidence now shows they are not even closely related. Their placement within the avian tree remains uncertain but they are undoubtedly an ancient lineage, their affinities tentatively closest to the Kagu Rhynochetos jubatus endemic to New Caledonia and Sunbittern Eurypyga helias of Tropical America.
What other surprises lie in store?
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