The mass extinction of living things is happening now across our planet.
The International Union for Conservation of Nature developed its Red List of Threatened Species in 1964 to catalogue and track the conservation status of Earth’s biological organisms. Through this “Barometer of Life,” global biological data is used to categorize species by conservation status. Today, over 48,600 species are threatened with extinction. This is 28% of all species described to date. Learn more here: https://www.iucnredlist.org/
Human actions threaten more species with global extinction now than ever before.
– Plenary of the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services, United Nations, 2019
In 2019, the United Nations Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services published its report on the seventh session’s work, sounding the alarm about the deterioration of the diversity of life on Earth and the planetary-scale systems that support it.
The present era is one of unsustainable growth and the use of natural resources. Despite tens of thousands of scientific papers finding that Earth’s life-support systems have been declining over the last four decades, and earnest efforts by governments, nonprofits, and private-public working groups to reverse these trends, human activities continue to unsustainably convert natural areas and farms to pervious surfaces, degrade water quality, reduce wildlife habitat, and undermine the resilience of natural systems, and those trajectories are accelerating. Conservation efforts have been, and continue to be, outmatched by the powerful forces driving land conversion, extraction, and development. This must change.
We have the knowledge and tools to turn the direction and save what biological diversity and natural systems are left; we need more resources and political will. Read the United Nations report here:
In December 2022, the United Nations Convention on Biodiversity, “Alarmed by the continued loss of biodiversity and the threat that this poses to nature and human well-being,” adopted the global goal to protect at least 30% of the Earth for biodiversity and ecosystem services by 2050 (the “K-M Global Biodiversity Framework”). Read the K-M Global Biodiversity Framework here:
For the future of all life on Earth, we must protect the land and oceans, and we must connect landscapes.
Nature can be conserved, restored and used sustainably while simultaneously meeting other global societal goals through urgent and concerted efforts fostering transformative change.
– Plenary of the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services, United Nations, 2019
What is conservation science?
Conservation science is a field of biology that seeks to conserve species and natural biological communities within the landscape of human activities.
Conservation scientists use rigorous science-based approaches to determine which types of ecosystems and habitats are priorities for nature conservation, and rank the importance of those areas across the landscape for protection based on their biological significance. These studies incorporate a range of ecological data, including the habitat requirements of multiple species, functional biological communities, climate change, and ecosystem processes.
Some of the research tools conservation scientists employ to understand ecosystem function at the species, population and community levels include:
- Remote sensing
- Biological surveys
- Climate modeling
- Historical research
- Population demographics
- Soil sampling
- Ice and tree ring core sampling
- Conservation genetics studies
- Community ecology studies
- Geological studies
Using Geographic Information Systems, data collected from these research tools can be assimilated to create large-scale maps that identify and rank the areas that need to be protected for natural processes to persist. These maps are incorporated into strategic conservation plans that are adopted at the federal, state and local levels of government to guide conservation work. Strategic conservation plans detail the areas across the landscape where natural systems need to be protected to preserve ecosystem services and long-term biological diversity.
Why is it important for natural processes to persist, and why should we care about protecting Nature?
Nature is essential for human existence and good quality of life. Most of Nature’s contributions to people are not fully replaceable, and some are irreplaceable.
– Plenary of the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services, United Nations, 2019
There are scientific reasons, economic reasons, societal reasons and ethical reasons.
From a scientific view, living things (the biosphere) interact with Earth’s atmosphere, hydrosphere, and lithosphere through the planetary-scale cycling of energy and nutrients. The complexities of these interactions have contributed to Earth’s climatic stability since the Ice Ages. The oceans (because of microscopic phytoplankton) and forests are the lungs of our planet; through photosynthesis, they produce oxygen and absorb carbon dioxide. Climate change due to anthropogenic fossil fuel use, resulting in extreme weather events and sea level rise, is occurring at ever-increasing rates globally, and scientists are reporting major die-offs of marine corals, forests, and entire species. We know from archaeological and paleontological research that climate instability is the main cause of Earth’s last five global mass extinctions. We are currently in the sixth. No one knows exactly what Earth’s climate will become in the next decades and centuries, but mass droughts and desertification will occur in some places, and extreme flooding will occur in others.
From an economic view, natural systems provide ecosystem services, free of charge, that are often undervalued or not valued at all in the costs of goods and services. Ecosystem services include the production of fresh water and oxygen, carbon sequestration, nutrient recycling, decomposition, pollination and seed dispersal. The disappearance and disruption of natural systems will affect food production, disease transmission, water availability, and usable land availability, resulting in higher costs of living. Sea level rise is already impacting low-lying coastal areas around the globe, and extreme weather is affecting homeowner insurance policy rates and mortgage markets. At some point, low-lying island nations and coastal communities will become uninhabitable, and people will be forced to relocate to inland locations with higher elevation. Society will have to grapple with the integration of climate refugees, increased population density, and shifting population dynamics. As pressures on water, food, and land availability increase, societal issues concerning the rights to natural resources will become ever more pressing. Protecting the natural systems that provide drinking water, water for agriculture, freshwater flows necessary for marine nurseries to ensure fish populations can persist, pollinators necessary for food production, and providing buffers between human activities and wilderness will both protect the natural systems and protect human populations from zoonotic diseases and adverse wildlife interactions.
Lastly, the amount of resources we allocate to nature protection raises important ethical questions that speak to who we are fundamentally and what we value. Nature – both in her grandeur and humility – has been the inspiration for authors, painters, poets, and songwriters throughout human history. Wilderness places touch our souls, provide solace, and are a source of joy in the diversity of plant and animal life. Visionaries of the past who protected the lands that are now our parks and forests left treasures beyond monetary value for future generations.
How Can Land Be Permanently Protected?
Through conservation easements and deed restrictions.
A conservation easement is a legal property ownership interest in land held by a party other than the landowner.
Under the concept of property law in the United States (which derives from property law invented during the Middle Ages in Europe), property ownership is viewed as a bundle of different legal rights held by the property owner. One of those rights is the right to develop land as the owner pleases.
To protect land from development and other uses that adversely affect natural systems in the long term, the property owner can sever the right to develop the land from the other rights he holds in his bundle. This is accomplished by a conservation easement agreement, a document drafted by a lawyer and recorded in the county recorder’s office, where property deeds are recorded. The conservation easement agreement lists in detail the conservation values of the property that are to be protected in perpetuity, and the land uses that will be severed from the property and thus disallowed to be undertaken by the present landowner, as well as by future landowners. Those severed land use rights are legally transferred to a nonprofit land trust, which accepts the responsibility of ensuring the terms of the conservation agreement are upheld, regardless of who owns the land in the future.
Land Trust staff monitor the property, and the land trust purchases legal insurance in case a future landowner breaches the terms of the conservation easement agreement. If a landowner breaches the conservation easement agreement, a lawsuit would ensue to restore the conservation values protected by the conservation easement agreement on the property.
Deed restrictions are another tool that may be available to protect the conservation values of land permanently. In some cases, landowners may be able to restrict future uses of a property by having an attorney enumerate those restrictions in the deed.
