Biodiversity Loss

The Attenuation of the Biological World — Part 2

Biodiversity Loss: Crisis in Sustainability

Burning RainforestAll these forms of anthropocentric trespass expedite the sick adrenalin rush of interest in every latest disaster, here today, replaced by another one tomorrow. News junkies thrive on bad news; bloggers wait breathlessly to spread the gossip; human-interest stories amid the chaos of melting icecaps, volcanic eruptions, other natural disasters from the tsunamis in the Indian Ocean to seismic shifts six miles beneath the waters off the coast of Haiti; not to mention more obscure problems, like a mid-air collision little reported upon at an astonishing 37,000 feet of altitude between a West African airliner over the Ivory Coast and a vulture, are all fair game for a voracious public whose children are growing up in the shadow of the most dangerous era in recorded history.

And just as we launch better, ever more precise technologies for observation, our collective unconscious is in ecological disarray; a mess that has not only failed to inhibit, but has actually expedited the loss of species — wild and domestic — at a rate of stunning tragedy. Nobody knows what to do. The British Petroleum accident is but one example of a truism hard to swallow for most, namely, that a president and his trusted cabinet members; a Nobel Prize-winning U.S. Secretary of Energy, governments in general are no longer up to the task of saving the global environment. The “Global 2000 Report” convened during the Carter Administration proved the point only two well that we are mired in a deeply-embedded cynicism that neither satisfies our need for wilderness and solitude (words written in to the first U.S. Wilderness Act) but are perpetuating a self-defeating fatalism when it comes to thinking about a viable future.

Earthquake Damaged BuildingsThe Club of Rome publication Limits To Growth by Donella H. Meadows, Dennis L. Meadows, Jorgen Randers and William W. Behrens III in 1972, following upon an essay in 1968 by the late ecologist Dr. Garret Hardin, “The Tragedy of the Commons” (*Science, 162[1968]:1243-1248) are now ascribed to by most students of ecological economics and sustainability (see Dancing Star Foundation video), along with the Malthusian premonition that our runaway population growth is clearly outstripping the earth’s non-renewable resources, her biological fundaments and her ability to revive herself. Those who have grown up with an orientation to spiritual ecology and animal rights would differ substantially from those in the scientific community who continue to call birds and mammals and other unique creatures “resources.” John Muir was horrified at such misuse of the language. A tree, he argued, cannot hide; it cannot run. Any fool can cut it down. It takes a tender heart, a wise soul to leave it be.

While some will claim that the Earth is resilient, that natural disasters and extinction spasms, as well as the ebb and flow of temperatures and glaciers are the norm, only ecological illiterates would rally to the notion — and many have — that there is nothing to worry about. That human business as usual is the business of the planet.

Part 1: Lack of Conservation Progress

Part 3: The Importance of Conserving Animal Rights

 

Burning Rainforest

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Hotspots

Hotspots: Biodiverse Areas Under Threat

Hotspots DVDThe filming of “Hotspots” throughout New Zealand encompassed over one hundred interviews with key scientists and others working to save endangered species and habitat, on Stewart Island/Rakiura, Ulva Island and Codfish Island (Whenua Ho), in Fiordland National Park, with the Department of Conservation in Te Anau and Burwood Bush, at Pukaha Mount Bruce National Wildlife Sanctuary, at the Grand and Otago Skink site at Macraes Flat in Central Otago, at Karori Wildlife Sanctuary in the heart of Wellington, at the Westshore Wildlife Reserve in Napier, at the Maungatautari Ecological Island Trust reserve, in the city parks of Auckland, and at Tiritiri Matangi Open Scientific Reserve, as well as dozens of other reserves and extraordinary locations throughout the country.

Some of the remarkable species captured on film include: a Short-tailed Bat pup, Kakapo, Kokako, Blue duck, several Kiwi, various Tuatara, Skinks, Kaka, Kea, Kakariki, Fantails, Keruru, Silver eyes, Stewart Island Black Robins, Little Blue Penguins, Yellow-Eyed Penguins, New Zealand Fur seals, Bottle Nosed Dolphins, Paradise Ducks, Hihi, Tomtit, Saddleback, Weka, Pukako, Brown Creeper, Grey Warbler, and many others.

DSF was grateful to have the strong collaboration of the Department of Conservation throughout this endeavor, and was pleased to be able to screen the very first showing of the film for the Southland Conservator and key staff of the Department of Conservation in Invercargill, and then for DOC staff on Stewart Island/Rakiura prior to a large public screening at the Waikato University Performing Arts Center, co-sponsored by the Botany Department of the University and the Maungatautari Ecological Island Trust.

(see Maungatautari ratesplace on global map, in the Waikato Times.)

One spin-off from the “Hotspots” filming throughout New Zealand to date is a special documentary short for the Department of Conservation and the Alexandra Museum Exhibition on the Grand and Otago Endangered Skinks.

For more information:

Skinks return to Alexandra after 30 years

Department of Conservation Museum and Art Gallery

 

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Hot Spots

 

Hot Spots Capital of the World: Peru

Monkey in the WildThe Peruvian section of the DSF film “Hotspots” was motivated by the recognition that the Tropical Andes represent, in Dr. Mittermeier’s words, “the global epicenter of biodiversity because it has far more species than any other hotspot on the planet: 1,728 species of birds of which nearly 600 are endemic . . . 1,155 amphibian species thus far recorded…Reptile diversity, more than 600 species, mammal diversity nearly 600 species. So you’re getting an enormous concentration of animal life in the tropical Andes and plants are just off the charts. You’re looking at 30 to 35 thousand plant species in this hotspot, which is about one and a half million square kilometers . . . more than 10% of all the world’s plants and about 15,000 of those are endemic and found nowhere else. This area is just an endless array of valley and mountains and each valley is a barrier to distribution. So you’re getting an enormous turnover of different life forms as you go north or as you go south . . . a fabulous region, unlike almost anyplace else on our planet.”

Near the Tambopata Research Center, a globally important field station for parrot research, four individuals of the recently discovered new species of titi monkey of the genus Callicebus showed themselves and were filmed by DSF for “Hotspots”. This was probably a first for the Peruvian side of the border though many months before, they were observed on the Bolivian side. The DSF “Hotspots” crew was also able to capture for the first time ever on film, just after midnight, the rarely seen Southern Amazon Bamboo Rat, Dactylomys dactylinus.

Skull from poached monkeyAt the famed clay licks, DSF “Hotspots” film crews documented the daily parrot ritual, much debated as to its function in avian physiology. Thousands of parrots of diverse species feed on the clay which contains high levels of sodium that might be crucial to neutralizing the toxins in the birds’ normal diets. Other species, peccaries and monkeys, for example, also were filmed feeding on the claylick which may argue for a broader theory of the importance of sodium and the various dietary methods of combating its absence amongst many terrestrial vertebrates.

One of our critically important goals for filming this portion of Peru for DSF’s “Hotspots” is to convey the iconic fragility of, and threats to, parrots worldwide. They are the victims of poaching, the pet trade and serious habitat loss. Poachers know where the clay licks are, and what time of day the birds are likely to assemble. Protecting these particular areas takes on the same level of global importance as protecting water holes where animals congregate anywhere in the world. Most importantly for all of the Psittaciforme genera and species is good habitat and that means large areas like Tambopata, and solid buffer zones within a conservation master plan.

For more information:

> Conservation International, Peru

> Rainforest Expeditions in Peru

> InkaNatura Travel: Conservation through tourism

 

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Biodiversity in Ecosystems

Yemen’s Legacy of Biodiversity

Girl in YemenDSF’s work in Yemen has been especially rewarding. Yemen as a whole presents a sobering profile. Her 21 million people are destined to exceed 71 million by 2050 at current trends. 74% of the nation is rural, male life expectancy a mere 59, females 63, with a daily income average of US$2.27.

It is not surprising, then, that there is widespread trafficking in wildlife and rapid loss of habitat. At least twenty species are known to be Threatened and Endangered, and the Arabian leopard in Yemen all but lost.

But Yemen also harbors an international success story, a treasure, that is spectacular, namely, her “Galapagos of the Indian Ocean,” the island archipelago of Socotra where, for Sanctuary: Global Oases of Innocence, we documented rich cultural traditions and remarkable indigenous biodiversity.

Scientists are making new discoveries almost daily on Socotra, a remote mountainous island South of Oman, East of Somalia. In the last 120 years, expeditions to the island have unveiled a veritable ecological renaissance of Socotran zoology. The island is a living font of biodiversification, most notably, among its bottle-trees: Dorstenia gigas gypsophila, Dendrosicyos socotrana, Adenium socotranum and obesum and, the most famous of all, Dracaena cinnabari or Dragon’s Blood.

Unusual Tree in Yemen

The island’s bird life is extensive, with 178 known species recorded here and at least seven endemics. This abundance of taxa coincides with one of the oldest known island sites of continuous human habitation in the world. Today, the population hovers somewhere around 44,000 people. Their linguistic deep lineage pre-dates the Arabic language by millennia, though Arabic is spoken in the Socotran capital of Hadibo.

With kind assistance from the local United Nations -supported Socotra Conservation and Development Programme, we were able to trek into several protected areas and document the Socotran mountain people and their traditional customs of sustaining rare resources and vegetation within numerous ecosystem types.

Once thought of as a kind of Garden of Eden, Socotra retains its unique character. Here are wild Socotran asses, camels, endemic dragonflies, sparrows, breeding Egyptian vultures, but most of all, the woody-based herbal eco-systems supporting wild floral kingdoms biologically unique. The Socotran mountain people have passed down a legacy — so rare in today’s world — of total devotion to sustainability. For thousands of years they have lived in this mindset.

For more information:

> Socotra Archipelago Conservation and Development Programme

 

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Biodiversity Importance

DSF’s Biodiversity Initiative in India

Within the biological hotspot known as the “Western Ghats and Sri Lanka,” exists one particular region of enormous biological endemism, much of it as yet unanalyzed in full, spanning parts of Western Tamil Nadu and Eastern Kerala. While nearly 15% of the overall hotspot enjoys some form of designated protected area (*1), there remains much to understand, and more to preserve in these globally unique montane rainforests and among the indigenous people who live there — particularly the Todas, one of the last largely vegetarian tribes anywhere in existence.

Frog in IndiaEBR or the Edhkwehlynawd Botanical Refuge (the “place from which a beautiful view is to be seen,” in the Toda, pre-Dravidian, language of Ahl) is a small parcel of private Trust land within this hotspot that harbors an educational and working scientific platform of great ecological and cultural importance. The EBR Trust was founded by Dr. Tarun Chhabra, an accomplished ecologist and a botanical specialist. Dr. Chhabra is one of the only people in the world, other than the Todas themselves, who speaks Ahl. With his associates, including the outstanding environmentalist Rami Singh, EBR has focused on helping the Toda to protect their traditional habitat, sustenance, agricultural gathering, and continue annual migrations with their sacred and endemic breed of buffalo. The fewer than 1,500 remaining Todas leave perhaps the lowest ecological footprint of any humans on earth (with the exception of Jain monks). Their knowledge of this hotspot goes back thousands of years, and their near universal vegetarianism and worship of buffalo and of nature, reveal a unique window on the human spirit and offer the hope of human sustainable communities in harmony with nature.

Toda water buffalo (Bubalus bubalis) are a vanishing breed, one of eighteen River buffalo breeds in South Asia.

According to recent data (*2) the Toda buffalo separated genetically from all others between 1800 and 2700 years ago. Without the Todas’ love for this gentle creature and for the shola mixed forest-grassland ecosystems upon which they depend, this animal and Toda culture itself would go extinct.

The EBR/Dancing Star Foundation Biodiversity Initiative is committed to documenting the Toda’s biologically remarkable habitat, and supporting local ecological restoration, study and replanting of native species and recording the tribal relationship with nature that harbors an ideal and blueprint for the future of human life on earth. A new joint EBR/DSF research expedition to fill in some biodiversity gaps within the greater Nilgiris Biosphere Preserve is being planned for the near future.

Footnotes:
1) Ajith Kumar, Rohan Pethiyagoda and Divya Mudappa, in Mittermeier, et.al, Hotspots Revisited, Cemex, 2004.

2) S. Kumar, et.al, “Genetic variation and relationships among eight Indian riverine buffalo breeds,” Molecular Ecology, Vol. 15, March 2006, p.593.

For more information:

> Edhkwehlynawd Botanical Refuge (EBR)

> MacArthur Foundation, India

> Family Planning Association, India

> Temples of Pushkar

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Conservation Biology & Animal Rights

Conservation Biology & Animal Rights: One Language

Conservationists and animal rights aficionados should, but do not always speak, the same language. Their focus is the same, but gulfs and debates continue to sunder what should be a unified concern for all life forms, wild or semi-wild. The genetics and phenotypes allegedly defining wild versus domestic are far less relevant than the basic ethical dispositions we should all be thinking about when it comes to passing down a legacy of kindness in general.

Cat on ShoulderEvery creature will die, and the sanctuary movement, those working with shelters and struggling to help the millions of stray dogs and cats and countless other species know only too well the challenges; the deep love of a companion animal (as so sensitively portrayed in the film, “Marley and Me” (2008, directed by David Frankel and starring Owen Wilson, Jennifer Aniston and Eric Dane, based upon author John Grogan’s deeply affecting book by the same title) that is so often met with indifference by communities with other priorities. Yet, and not to wit, a poll some years ago showed that a majority of American women, if forced to make a choice, would take their pet dog over their husband.

The question for the animal rights movement is how to ensure a quality of life for all animals during their natural stay here on Earth; to affect legislators, consumers, scientists, habitat managers, multinational corporations, government agencies concerned with Environmental Impact Statements and Biological Opinions, students, people of faith, indigenous communities and world leaders; to inspire and galvanize children and their parents and their parents’ bankers or money managers; their pension fund officers, their colleagues at work, their friends and loved ones with the belief system that every creature is precious, vulnerable and seeking only love.

For conservation biologists the conundrum is no less challenging: how to target good science at policies that will spell the life or death of habitat, exercising informed suasion as a sharp, but tolerant tool for enlightening those that have the possibility of seeing straight, of empathic responses to the complexities of hope.

We must find viable pathways to hope. As Saint Francis and so many others like him said throughout his life, we must learn how to expand the circles of compassion to encompass all living creatures. This is the message of PETA, People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals. This is also the message of the United Nations, of every museum of art; of every Church, Synagogue, and Temple, Mosque and sacred space. This is the Aboriginal Dreamtime; the hope of every child looking up at his or her parents; the innocents of the world.

Yet, as widespread as these injunctions and human traditions are, the conservation conundrum (see Dancing Star Foundation video) — in concert with the full unbridled scope of animal rights — is uncharted territory because our species, relative to most of the likely 100 million or so others, is the newest to enter the mainstream. Tragically, at least so far, we are failing to reach consensus on the sacredness of this planet, our only home; on sound, science and ethic-based methodologies for restoring kindness in the form of a broad, multidisciplinary embrace of all creatures great and small. But we will get there.

 

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Preserving Sustainable Resources

Biological Miracles and Ecological Faith in the Future — Part 3

Preserving Sustainable Resources: Dancing Star Foundation Missions

Those at Dancing Star Foundation believe that all life is precious; that animal rights is most magnificently displayed in two specific arenas: among individuals, and at levels of vast habitat protection, such as at the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem (over 20 million acres) or the largest single national park in America, Wrangell-Saint Elias, overlooking the Lost Coast of Alaska, as well as encompassing vast sections of the South-Central Interior of that state.

Yellowstone Hot SpringsEngaging in both the protection of forests, as well as the individual trees, has been hard for many to reconcile. Add to this compounding dilemma of protections the unwieldy ecological footprint of 6.8 billion people, soon to become nearly 10 billion or more, with all of their consumer habits, and the options for environmental hope grow dimmer by the moment.

Yet, think of all those who have brought beauty, human beauty, to the world; people like Mozart, Monteverdi, Beethoven, Da Vinci, Shelley, Corot, George Inness, John Hay, Aldo Leopold, Thoreau, Bach, Vermeer, Stanley Kunitz, Han-Shan, Kuo His, the countless brave souls struggling to save what’s left in all the 35 terrestrial hotspots. These are personal pillars of hope and received wisdom throughout time and we must acknowledge them, pay our respects and — most importantly — try day and night to follow in their footsteps.

At the Dancing Star Foundation animal sanctuaries in California as well as New Zealand, we are trying to do both: to protect rescued animals and provide true sanctuary for them, while also focusing on the wild creatures. Maintaining a balance between the two is never an easy proposition. In island nations like New Zealand, endemic species were absolutely unequipped by evolution to cope with the sudden onslaught of non-native carnivores and omnivores. In continental North America, biological carrying capacity ordains cycles of native grass species given to x-number of herbivores; the compaction of soil; and the necessity for (unnatural) human intervention which by definition equates with the animal rights conundrum, namely, sanctuary ethics, and how to best ensure long, dignified natural life spans for animals who would, otherwise, cease to exist outside the sanctuary confines.

Part 2: The Values of Conservation
Part 1: Is Conservation Achieving It’s Goals? (the beginning)

 

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Conservation Values

Biological Miracles and Ecological Faith in the Future — Part 2

The Values of Conservation


Jean-Paul Sartre in the Amazon

Sartre’s stunning novel questioned our ability to make meaningful contact with nature, particularly the bark of a tree wherein is writ large the story of cavity nesting birds, not to mention all those other vertebrates and invertebrates that continue to be discovered at places like Yasuni. Most importantly, Sartre, the scientists at Yasuni, E. O. Wilson, Teddy Roosevelt (following upon his days spent in the company of John Muir) and Bromfield all understood that conservation means spirituality; idealistic pragmatism; simplicity; honesty; virtue. Such words have lost much of their staying power in an age where everything is for sale; where life has been devalued in a logarithmic inverse relation to humanity’s runaway population explosion.

PenguinsThe conundrum could not be more serious, Recent polls suggest that among the American public some 60 percent do not take Global Warming seriously, let alone the extinction of tigers, Giant Pandas or penguins. They do not concern themselves with the fact at least 80 percent of all parrots are endangered, or that the United States legally allows for the import of more wild-caught species listed under international treaties (particularly CITES, the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora) than any other nation. It is not surprising, therefore, that for every 100 American citizens, there are estimated to be 90 guns; that the U.S. National Park Service has recently consented to park visitors carrying (licensed) guns; that poaching is at an all-time high, translating into tens-of-billions of dollars per year and untold millions of animals and plants; that another 250 million animals end up as road-kill annually just within the United States; and that worldwide more than 53 billion vertebrates are slaughtered under unimaginably cruel circumstances every year (and that figure does not include fish).

These data sets do not commend anything like a “happy face” or happy cows, anymore than it would suggest that malnourished children, or oppressed women and their daughters, are happy; that slum-dwellers prefer the slums (a statement we have heard uttered by many in India); or that habitat which is being chewed up by human development at an unimaginably rapid rate is a good thing. Indeed, this all connotes the kind of “insanity” the mother shaman in James Cameron’s film “Avatar” suggests is probably incurable.

Part 1: Is Conservation Achieving It’s Goals?
Part 3: Preserving Sustainable Resources: Dancing Star Foundation Missions

 

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Conservation Achieving It’s Goals?

Biological Miracles and Ecological Faith in the Future — Part 1

Is Conservation Achieving It’s Goals?

To glean but one example of the prolific nature of biodiversity, consider the ongoing data base from Ecuador’s Yasuni National Park, probably the single most biologically elegant fortress of interdependent life forms as yet discovered, with nearly six hundred bird species, 150 amphibian populations, “more tree species, 655″ in a single hectare (2.47 acres) than in all of the United States (and “1,100 for an area of 25 hectares”); and “more tree, shrub and liana (woody vines) species than anywhere else in the world,” according to Gorky Villa, an Ecuadorian botanist who has specialized in the area.

Rain ForestMost impressive of all, there are projections (up from 60,000 in 1998) that as many as 100,000 insect species inhabit every hectare of Yasuni. At the Tiputini Biodiversity Station, a 1,600-acre research center on the northern side of the national park, there are a known “247 amphibian and reptile species, 550 bird species and around 200 mammal species.” The park also contains underground oil reserves (wouldn’t you know it) and Ecuador is not a rich country although the current administration has vowed to protect the park. (*See Margot S. Bass, Matt Finer, Clinton N. Jenkins, Holger Kreft, Diego F. Cisneros-Heredia, Shawn F. McCracken, Nigel C. A. Pitman, Peter H. English, Kelly Swing, Gorky Villa, Anthony Di Fiore, Christian C. Voigt, Thomas H. Kunz. “Global Conservation Significance of Ecuador’s Yasun’ National Park,” PLoS ONE, 2010; 5 (1): e8767 DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0008767)

Add to such data scientific findings from Singapore some years ago which indicated at least two co-symbiotic species dependent on every identified species and that 100,000 projection for Yasuni insects suddenly jumps to 300,000; and with every one of those 300,000, add another unknown quanta of endemic follicle mites, hair louse, bacteria, et cetera, and the Earth’s prolific palette becomes a great Impressionist picnic, infinite in its riches.

Yet, just as we discover such indescribable Creation, we bolster our age-old sense of self-enthrallment with the knowledge that at least five past global extinction events were “normal”; that the huge die out of the so-called “Age of Fishes” by 359 million years ago made way for opportunists on the fringes, from frogs to (eventually) Homo sapiens. This kind of relativism has raised the polemical heat in the room where politics and economics argue for oil extraction from such remarkable sites as Yasuni National Park. In March of 2010, 27 square miles of “high-value conservation land in national parks and other currently protected areas” across New Zealand were considered by the government as possible fair game for mining. (See www.ens-newswire.com/) Conservationists were “horrified” but the story is an old one: nothing is sacred. We are in trouble. The conservation conundrum comes down to the following: can we stem the tide of destruction, wake up, smell the roses, achieve full maturity as a collective, or are we doomed to write the most ephemeral, nonsensical epitaphs of any species? Is conservation achieving even a fraction of its goals? Teddy Roosevelt, who created the first Fish and Wildlife Reserve at Pelican Island in Florida in 1903 (a mere 5.3 acres which have since been eroded to fewer than 3 acres) for purposes of protecting Brown Pelicans, had gotten ecological patriotism and religion. Previously, he had exemplified the full machismo of the so-called Great White Hunter (later to be thought of as “professional hunters” who still have virtually free reign across a dozen African nations). The second President Roosevelt would commend Louis Bromfield (1896 to 1956) and his organic farming practices at Malibar Farm in Pleasant Valley, Ohio. Bromfield moved there in 1938, the year Jean-Paul Sartre published his most influential piece of fiction, Nausea.

Part 2: The Values of Conservation

 

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Biodiversity Successes and Failures

Disasters and Solutions — Part 2

Biodiversity Successes and Failures

Wall Street burns, wealth accumulation vanishes overnight, but the real wealth — as every villager dependent on safe drinking water and healthy soils can attest to — is lodged in the integrity of ecosystems that we will either come to understand and make peace with, or vanish.

Australian FernThe huge lingering question mark was posed many years ago by biologist E. O. Wilson, the world’s authority on ants (who recently turned to writing his first novel to explore the concept of free will, the brilliance of ants and their strange relationship to ungainly, bipedal, largely carnivorous creatures called Man). Wilson asked, “Is Man Suicidal?” in a cover story for the New York Times. Now we must reconsider the terror that he evinced in his provocative manner: if there is a God, is it patient enough to withstand one blow after another, caused at that very exact juncture wherein human beings partake of, but mostly exploit the natural world? One historian likened this syndrome to the British who were said to have backed their trucks up to the sub-continent of India and — true to Western biocultural imperialism — driven off with the goods. It was that simple. Similarly, 19th century settlers to New Zealand (like Utopian polymath Samuel Butler who leased a massive sheep station in Central Otago (eastern South island) named Mesopotamia (it still exists) and spent about four years in all making enough money to get back to Europe and make his career as a novelist, literary critic and photographer. New Zealand immigrants in the latter part of the 19th and early 20th centuries cut down more indigenous forest, in a shorter period of time, than in any other region on the planet. Today, many New Zealanders comfort themselves with what has become an advertising mantra, namely, “clean, green New Zealand.” It is not entirely true, though visitors from far more decimated parts of the world see New Zealand through happily rose-colored glasses and, in fact, New Zealand conservationists are among the most ardent, thoughtful and decisive environmentalists in the world. The same can be said of the countries growing animal rights constituencies, mostly on account of the organization SAFE (Save Animals From Exploitation) based in Christchurch.

All these avenues of historic precedent and current species extirpation come down to the same terrible nightmare: the destruction of Earth by one species. This fact is discernible each day on countless websites that provide images and data on the more than 14,000 Critically Endangered, Threatened, Rare or Uncommon Species on Earth, at present. But remember, that 14,000-+ figure is taken from less than 50,000 organisms studied in any depth to-date, when, in fact, we know there are at least 1.8 million species which have been identified, out of possibly as many as 100 million others (including bacteria and viruses) waiting to be discovered.

Part 1: Ecological Challenge: Overconsumption

 

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