All it takes is a stroll through your local park to see that the world is saturated with life. At a glance, the eye takes in birds, mammals, reptiles, trees. A stretch of ground chosen at random will reveal hordes of plants, insects, tiny worms, fungus and bacteria hidden from the naked eye.
Our world is not merely diverse in cultures but in life itself. Scientists have counted almost two million distinct life forms. That is a mere fraction of what they believe is still waiting to be found.
Yet the world’s incredible biodiversity is shrinking fast. The earth has experienced five major extinctions since life first appeared almost 4 billion years ago. The sixth is happening right now—and it is caused by humans. The current extinction rate is between 100 and 1,000 times greater than what it was before 1800.
Gorongosa National Park, 2011
The continuing destruction of rain forests—the biodiversity hot spots of the world—is wiping out entire species that have existed for tens of millions of years, and genetically limiting the ones that survive. Mysteriously, the study of extinction remains one of the most neglected in ecology.
In Gorongosa National Park, deforestation is being met by training local farmers in sustainable agriculture.
The most exotic creature in the most remote rain forest is a priceless repository of genetic information, with potential uses for agriculture, technology, and medicine. Humans have come to depend completely on less than one percent of living species for our existence. Scientists have identified about 75,000 species of plants—many superior to the crop plants in widest use. The majority of life exists outside our purview, untested and fallow.
In Biodiversity, E.O. Wilson (1929–2021) writes,
“The drive toward perpetual expansion—or personal freedom—is basic to the human spirit. But to sustain it we need the most delicate, knowing stewardship of the living world that can be devised.”
Each species is unique and intrinsically valuable, and biological diversity must be treated as an invaluable global resource—to be indexed, used and above all, preserved.
Gorongosa National Park, 2011
With the large-scale extinction of species, our opportunity to study the wide breadth of life is slipping away forever. We can act now to salvage and take careful note of the biodiversity that still remains.