Ready for the Vegas floor show: marine copepods, by the incomparable Haeckel. In Kunstformen der Natur, 1904. Click image for source and species IDs.
You all have gathered, I’m sure, that I have a love/hate relationship with the term “biodiversity”. There’s nothing inherently wrong with it, but it gets used so much in so many vague ways that I feel it turns a lot of people off to the subject in the same way “family values” and “social justice” do. It’s been politicized and corporatized.
Still, we must have a term for the idea, and no other word seems to fit quite as well, and even if it did, it would certainly soon suffer the same fate. To that end, I accept and use the term, and present you now with a biodiversity news roundup.
First, there is this press release from the University of Oxford highlighting a study recently published in Science. In it, the authors claim life is much more adaptable to climate change than we are giving it credit for. If that’s true, I’m all for it!
A second article in Nature (subscription required), however, takes an opposite, but not inherently contradictory approach. It notes we are falling woefully short on goals we’ve set for ourselves for protecting biodiversity in the last five or so years.
Then there is this news: Mark your calendars because the UN has decreed 2010 the International Year of Biodiversity, partly in response, I’m sure, to our lack of progress on our goals. I note with consternation, for instance, that the calendar of events for next year does not yet include any events anywhere in the United States, though Cameroon, Indonesia, and Slovakia have all stepped up to the plate.
Further highlighting biodiversity’s emerging importance, the Smithsonian Institution has announced its Strategic Plan for the years 2010-2015 and they have decided to make biodiversity one of their top priorities: the report designates four “grand challenges”, which are “Unlocking the Mysteries of the Universe”, “Valuing World Cultures”, “Understanding the American Experience”, and, of interest to us, “Understanding and Sustaining a Biodiverse Planet”.
Scientists know the importance of biodiversity, but I often feel the rubber is failing to hit the road when it comes to convincing people why it is important. Some have tried to emphasize the provision of <jargon alert>ecosystem services</jargon alert> (clean air, clean water, keeping the climate stable for agriculture; in short, preserving a livable planet). This article (subscription required) profiles a woman who’s campaigning to save biodiversity with that business-based approach, but it does gently point out that sometimes the best carbon storage or ecosystem services areas aren’t always the ones with the highest biodiversity. What then?
Well, that’s where my efforts (along with hopefully yours and many others) come in. I want to help communicate to the public why these creatures are inherently cool, and no less worth reverently preserving for their own sake than the contents of the Louvre, the city of Pompeii, the original folios of Shakespeare, or Def Leppard’s greatest hits. OK, maybe that last one is just me.
But you get my meaning: we should protect biodiversity because it’s the right thing to do. I don’t understand why we aren’t pouring more money into this. I’m all for space exploration, but barring hyperspace bypass construction, Mars, Europa, Enceladus, Pluto, and the Kuiper Belt will all be there in 50 years. So will any life they may or may not harbor. A large proportion (up to a third of ALL species by 2050, by some estimates) of mind-blowingly cool Earth species, many of which I’ve told you about before, may not. Gone forever. If I think about it too hard, it makes me want to cry. Why are we sinking billions into space exploration, and pocket change into ocean exploration and preserving biodiversity? As much as I like fossils, I like the real things much better.
{ 6 comments… read them below or add one }
Jennifer I share your concerns and fears. I’ve spent most of my adult life wrestling with (and sometimes running from) biodiversity and wilderness causes. I had periods of greater activism that burned me out and necessitated breaks. At times my fellow activists sabotaged the causes that we worked on. So I would retreat for a while and regather my own strength. Now most everything I do is with my keyboard or wallet.
We ought to organize something and submit it to get the U.S. onto that schedule of events. I keep thinking back to something we did in college. A friend created a series of tombstones* for the extinct and extirpated species of Ohio. It was the perfect kind of display to put on college campus. Some people came just to learn more, some to mourn, and others to help find their motivation for continuing the fight. Ideally this could be a traveling cemetery (like the traveling Vietnam wall replica) and each new school that takes care of it would add tombstones for local species before passing it on.
A lot of activism comes out of mourning and anger, but too often I think that the activists forget to take time to cry and rage. At the end of the day, I think those are the only human responses to the insanity.
I’ve got a blog to write in greater response. It’s tempting to keep going here, but I’ll stop and come back with a link.
* They were made almost exclusively of wood that was rescued from dumpsters. Stone would have been too expensive and heavy, and anything that required buying materials seemed offensive and contrary to the whole purpose.
As promised, here is the link to my blog with further thoughts about mourning lost species.
I really feel this is at least one good thing for the U.S. to do in the Year of Biodiversity, and am pretty excited to have found an old friend while considering it. Whether it is a traveling exhibit or collaboration that leads to a group funeral, I think it is needed. Our country has much to atone for (*cough* passenger pigeon *cough*). I don’t want or need a congressional declaration, nor reparations to any surviving related pigeons. I think a real memorial service would mean more anyway.
In the end maybe we need a permanent memorial to all the species we’ve wiped out, like they have in Ohio. But I’ll work on that after figuring out how to pull off this funeral idea.
Also, The Onion recently published an editorial on money wasted by NASA. I think the proper environmentalist response is to encourage space programs for species with endangered habitats, so they can seek out new worlds. Some days I look around at my fellow humans and realize there’s probably some benthic invertebrates with more highly developed moral compasses, if not spines. I might even get on one of their spaceships if given a chance.
That sounds like a great idea, Oroboros. My plate is full, unfortunately, but I wish you luck in pulling it off. Just make sure that you include some non-vertebrates, and that doesn’t just mean invertebrates. [Sally Struthers voice] Remember the plants and fungi! [/Sally Struthers voice] Some good Nat-Geo-quality tombstonal pictures for people to look at could go a long way too.
Though I certainly understand what you’re saying, I’m not sure benthic invertebrates would have an more highly developed moral compasses than we do (and certainly not spines! ; ) ). Nature can be a pretty cruel place, all things considered. Wild animals lead tough lives usually followed by unpleasant deaths. In addition to all the garden-variety nastiness, pretty much any successful species will try to take over the world, weed-style. It’s just that H. sapiens has evolved consciousness, compassion, and ethics and, in my opinion, we should know better.
By the way, I don’t want to come across as NASA-bashing either. I love planetary science and even took a class on it in grad school. I just question why we spend so much on that and NOT on ocean exploration and biodiversity protection. There are many other places from which funds for such endeavors could come. I can think of a big five-sided one in particular.
You’re right that humans should know better…. I’m sorry if my humor was probably a little too sarcastic or bitter. This whole CRU incident has been very hard. I’ve been exposed to a lot of hatred toward scientists online, which may account for some of my desire to hop on the next spaceship full of starfish ;) Still, some politicians give spineless bottomfeeders bad names!
There I go again…
And also I’m sorry if I meant to imply anything further by way of help needed – I’m really happy to just have a seed planted and get a little feedback to run with. What you do here is important and needed.
There’s a bit of weird and probably meaningless synchronicity that I still can’t ignore. Carl Zimmer blogged about ExtInked tattoos of endangered species on Thursday. That night I found myself in line after his talk waiting to have my book signed when suddenly I heard “Hi I’m Jen Frazer and I have a blog called the Artful Amoeba”.
So it was funny to unexpectedly witness two of my favorite science writers meeting. I’d been blogging hours before about the extinct species graveyard created by my friend Vince (who did my first tattoo, a spider).
I’m probably just a primate that is exceptionally good at recognizing patterns and finding meaning in them when there is none. It was still completely bizarre. If I had an omniscient computer I’d want the odds.
Oh my gosh, that is amazing!! I had no idea you were there or going to be there. Well, the odds on that have to be tiny indeed, but not so tiny as you’d think. We all have a common interest, after all. Were you before or after me in line? I couldn’t think what to say to him, so I just thanked him for coming and said I enjoyed his lecture very much.
I was in the next line over buying The Tangled Bank – I’d just given away my first unread copy to a friend as early holiday present. I really couldn’t think of what to say to Carl either. I sensed he was tired by the time I got there at the end which was understandable. Talking for long always takes a lot out of me.
I’ve continued to bounce this idea off friends. More and more I thought about a permanent memorial in D.C. – something like the Vietnam Wall where the display would also have blank space to add more species names. It would hopefully force visitors to think about which will be next. Obviously the wall idea is already done so if I was the artist I might still do an actual graveyard with granite tombstones as permanent memorial, with some blank ones and perhaps roped-off empty graves.
I realized the best person I might ask for advice is the creator of the Vietnam Wall, Maya Lin. I studied Chinese Poetry with her mother and met her brother once too. I just learned that she currently has an exhibit that sounds very relevant. This is the description from her web site:
I may just make a trip to visit it for inspiration, even if I feel like maybe there’s not the same need for what I was planning (not abandoning it just yet either). There is definitely an event already planned that can be submitted to BYSE 2010 event calendar. I’m going to see if I can find Maya’s address or maybe her mother’s to get the submittal request to her since she’d really be the best person to submit it. The event is mentioned here:
Her mom actually had our class over for dinner one night when I was in school. It was a traditional Chinese meal unlike any I’ve had before or since. She showed off some of the scale models of her daughter’s work and I’ve been a fan since.