Climate change will bring extreme conditions to much of Earth’s surface without immediate action. (Image is in the public domain: CC0 1.0 Universal)

Human activities may promote speciation

We applaud the vital work to save species at risk. However, it is a truism (if not a law) of biology, that all species will eventually go extinct. With that sobering thought, can we ask what level of effort should be expended to save those plants and animals that are inevitably doomed? With his new book, Inheritors of the Earth, Chris Thomas, Professor of Evolutionary Biology at the University of York inspired me to consider an alternative view. He argues that many plants and animals benefit from human activities. For example, many species have expanded their geographic ranges. According to evolutionary biology theory, increasing fragmentation and niche availability drive species diversification. Indeed, Thomas argues that human activities are “increasing the rate at which new species are formed, perhaps to the highest level in Earth’s history.”

Embrace neobiodiversity

Thus, rather than the depressing notion that conservation is fighting a losing battle, we can view some kinds of human activity as actually promoting biodiversity in the long run. This positive view will provoke controversy. However, if we embrace the idea of a new paradigm for maximizing biodiversity, which we can call “neobiodiversity,” conservationists can start to turn toward the most serious threat facing life on Earth: climate change.

Climate change is the biggest threat

Indeed, earlier this month, the IPCC released yet another climate change report again sounding loud warning bells. Just this week, the Washington Post reported on a study published in PNAS showing “massive loss” of insect abundance in pristine rainforest. The researchers identified climate change as the culprit in driving the precipitous decline. Without action, we’re undoubtedly facing environmental catastrophe. Many scientists warn that we may soon reach a variety of tipping points. Beyond these, runaway global warming and its effects are unstoppable. Extreme conditions will prevail across large swathes of Earth. At this point, it won’t matter what species we have saved. They will disappear anyway, and humans along with them. Earth may be uninhabitable but for a few extremophiles.

Conservationists must shift focus to deal with climate change

Given this urgency, we should heed Professor Thomas’s message to “re-examine humanity’s relationship with nature.” We must be done with business as usual. Treating “Earth as a faded masterpiece that we need to restore” is no longer a luxury we can afford. Instead, global conservation must focus on taking all and any steps necessary to combat global warming. At the same time, such measures may include reforestation, which may benefit legacy species, but species-focused conservation may be a priority that no longer takes center stage in a long-term strategy to save life on Earth.

REFERENCES

1. 2018 IPCC Report: Global Warming of 1.5 °C http://www.ipcc.ch/report/sr15/
2. Lister, BC & A. Garcia (2018) Climate-driven declines in arthropod abundance restructure a rainforest food web. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. DOI: 10.1073/pnas.1722477115

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A picture is worth a thousand words, they say. That may be true! Today we’re swamped with information. Images can say a lot with a little. That said, we’re in the digital revolution. So now we’re flooded with zillions of photos and memes. We like and tag images on social media. News websites have photos of current events. We share our own lives with selfies, food or pet pictures.

In today’s firehose of images are powerful stories about nature. Facts and figures are vital. But to connect with the widest audience we must nature’s story. Visual media are the most effective way to do that. Images transcend language. They evoke emotions in ways that words and data cannot. Human devastation, and our natural world’s fragility and beauty are best shown through biodiversity images like the ones you see here. Together they show human impacts on biodiversity, wildlife, the environment, and natural resources. Threats include global warming, deforestation, pollution and wildlife exploitation.

Help to tell the story of biodiversity

To help you share these stories, we’ve put together ten amazing images and graphics. We encourage you to share these images as widely as possible (including appropriate credit). It’s vital now more than ever to tell the story of biodiversity. It’s the only way we’re truly going to make a difference.

In all cases, we have strived to provide appropriate credit to the creators and copyright holders. Please contact us if you recognize an image and additional or alternative attribution is required.

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Stephen Thompson, 2018 Conservation Greenkeeper of the Year and member of Biodiversity Professionals

John o’ Gaunt Golf Club has two 18-hole courses. John o’ Gaunt course is a parkland style course with lots of trees, a brook running through and a newly installed pond. The Carthagena course is on part of the sandstone ridge. It’s much more free draining and has a more heathland feel to it, with gorse in various places, an oak woodland down one side and elm down another.

I have recorded about 100 species of birds including barn owl (Tyto alba), kestrel (Falco tinnunculus), oystercatcher (Haematopus ostralegus), waxwing (Bombycilla garrulus and even a nightjar, as well as more common species such as great spotted woodpecker (Dendrocopos major) and blue tit (Cyanistes caeruleus).

Golf course conservation outreach

Over the last two years I have been running a moth trap regularly by the tractor sheds and held several moth evenings with the local moth group. To date, I have now recorded 354 species at the club including the rare white spotted pinion moth (Cosmia diffinis) on the Carthagena course.

A marbled white butterfly (Melanargia galathea).

Mating pair of large red-tailed damselflies (Pyrrhosoma nymphula).

Golf course conservation outreach

Helping wildlife on the golf course

There are several ways I help the wildlife on the course: I have made and installed over 100 bird boxes which I check every spring mostly in my own time and with a ringing permit, ring any chicks I find. I check boxes in the winter and repair and replace where necessary. I have also helped create many wildflower areas providing much needed habitats for bees and other pollinating insects.

Recognized for golf course conservation

I have helped bring much media attention to the club, appearing on BBC TV and local radio. I have helped the club win awards both locally and nationally, and written many articles in national magazines. I have been a finalist four times in a row in the Golf Environments Awards in the category of Conservation Greenkeeper of the Year. This year, I was recognized as Conservation Greenkeeper of the Year. Some golf course owners are less aware of the benefits these green spaces can provide. However, as my work shows, a golf course does not have to be just a golf course. It can also be a conservation boon for wildlife and wildlife advocates.

Resources
Steve on LinkedIn
Steve on Facebook
Steve on Twitter
Steve Thompson, Greenkeeper John O’Gaunt Golf Club – Badger Trust Conference 2016

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Advice on how to spot fake news from the International Federation of Library Associations and Institutions. You can apply these principles to spot dubious claims from those who use unethical fund-raising methods. (Image courtesy of Wikimedia Commons.)

A hair-raising fund-raising story

This story begins with a post I read on LinkedIn. The article in question is trying to raise money for a conservation organization. Among several dubious claims, one stuck out. According to the author, for “approximately $12M a single donor could have protected, in perpetuity… trillions of microbial species.”

Well, I’m not a soil scientist. However, I’ve studied biodiversity since the mid-1980s. So I know that we understand microbial biodiversity too poorly to make such a claim. The writer is not a soil scientist, either. But that lack of expertise did not stop him from making this dramatic claim. I commented on his post that there is simply no agreement among biologists about the number of microbial species. In support, I found a Nature article that says, “estimates for the total number of microbial species vary wildly, from as low as 120,000 to tens of millions and higher.” Millions, maybe. But trillions? Who can say? Indeed, biologists can’t even agree on how well Mayr’s definition of species applies to microbes, and prokaryotes in particular. (See e.g., Konstantinidis, et al. 2006). The writer simply has no justification for stating that a donation could save “trillions of microbial species.”

Nevertheless, the writer insisted that he was correct in his use of that unverifiable number. I beg to differ. Any time someone uses an exaggeration, hyperbole or invented data to bolster a cause, particularly when trying to raise money, their motives are suspect. In the old days, such a person would be called a snake oil salesman, a charlatan, a conman or any number of other derogatory names. I avoided such epithets. Instead I tried to present my case rationally, from a scientific standpoint. To no avail.

Bogus claims

The writer made several other claims that I could challenge. For example, the claim that $12M could protect 11 million acres of “life-essential ecosystems.” I have helped to manage a small conservation non-profit called SavingSpecies for the past seven years. We focus on buying cheap, degraded land in high biodiversity areas of the world. The cheapest land we have been able to purchase was in Ecuador at just over $400 per acre. That land was infertile and eroded former cattle pasture. When we bought it, the land was not good even for that any more. So quite how the writer proposed to protect “in perpetuity” land comprising “life-essential ecosystems” for $1.09 per acre is a complete mystery to me.

The corrosive effects of fake news

Dubious claims such as these benefit no-one. Indeed, it’s a sad commentary on our times that we’re swamped with “fake news.” Look no further than Washington DC. You can see the corrosive effects of false and misleading information. For those of us who are in the fund-raising business, it’s more vital than ever to keep our facts and figures straight. Yes, there’s lots of competition for the donor dollar. But that does not justify using hyperbole. Bending facts, fudging figures, massaging data–these are the tools of hustlers and swindlers, not respectable fund-raising enterprises. Here’s why you should stick to the facts.

1. Exaggeration or dubious claims do your enterprise more harm than good.
2. Such claims damage your own credibility, and that of organizations for whom you’re working.
3. The claims of other hard-working fund-raisers and conservationists can also come under suspicion, particularly among non-experts.
4. You provide opponents of conservation with ammunition to use against conservation in general.
5. When donors give to causes based on exaggerated claims, and their expectations aren’t met, they will likely give their future gifts to unrelated causes.

Read up, stand up, and speak up

So, my fellow conservationists and fund-raisers, I implore you (1) to carefully read through claims to ensure that they are based on fact and are verifiable, (2) not to share or like any content that has questionable data, and (3) to call out the perpetrators when you encounter them. Otherwise, we risk being tarred by the same “fake news” brush that plagues other realms of the media. And that jeopardizes the entire donor-funded conservation enterprise.

REFERENCE
Konstantinidis, K, Ramette A and Tiedje JM (2006) The bacterial species definition in the genomic era. Philos Trans R Soc Lond B Biol Sci. 361(1475): 1929–1940. doi: 10.1098/rstb.2006.1920

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This article serves to introduce biodiversity professionals to contemporary environmental philosophy. It is a discipline that could play an important role in (re)shaping the objectives conservation organisations set for themselves. It deals with complex questions that cannot be disregarded if we aim for conservation to stand the test of time.

Lessons from history

Nature conservation in any of its forms can only be effective if there is consensus on what nature is, and how we want to conserve it. This seems no difficult job: most people we know would associate ‘true’ nature with concepts such as ‘pristine land’, ‘undisturbed areas’ or ‘wilderness’.

Similarly, the important Wilderness Act of 1964 (USA) considers wilderness ‘untrammelled by man’ and ‘where man is a visitor who does not remain’. Although such definitions speak to the imagination of lovers of nature, many critics now agree that they are ethnocentric. What was defined as ‘untrammelled by man’ in North America, had long been home to millions of indigenous North Americans. By excluding them from the definition applied to these lands, the removal of Native Americans from their homelands was further facilitated.

This might seem a merely historical argument, but unfortunately it is still relevant: practices like these continued, sad examples being the nomadic Penans in Malaysia and the African Masai tribes. It is highly ironic how some large Western conservation organisations fail to put a stop to the destruction of the remnants of biodiversity hotspots in industrialised Europe, but sometimes accuse various ‘primitive’ populations of being a threat to an endangered species in Third World countries. Fortunately, many other organisations have realised the importance of striking a balance between nature conservation and the rights of indigenous people.

Contemporary problems related to the definition of nature

Wilderness paradoxes still occur to this day. For example: conservation organisations often clear woodland, in order to restore the land to its ‘original state’. For example, in Belgium and the Netherlands, these are often heathland restoration projects. But what exactly is the ‘original state’ of the land? Heathland used to be abundant exactly because of the clearing of woodland in order to make room for agriculture. Thus, heathland is by definition nothing like wilderness. Many would rightly argue that making room for both woodlands and heathland benefits biodiversity. However, do we want to pursue higher biodiversity if it is not strictly natural?

Surely, we rather not have ourselves to be the ‘architects of nature’, establishing nature in a way linked to the highest possible biodiversity. Is leaving natural succession to swallow up a large number of heathlands a good alternative then? Only because that is how it would be without human intervention, we would risk the loss of species typical of these biotopes. This does not seem like a good idea either.Important as the concept is, we have to avoid biodiversity to become a dogma of nature conservation. It is not up to us to protect or restore the biodiversity of nature no matter what. It is up to us to prohibit or reverse excessive human impact upon nature: human impact that is often accompanied by the decline of biodiversity.

Reversing our past impacts on nature?

But even if we agree that we ought to reverse human impact, the question rises to what extent we should. Do we try to reverse the huge changes we have forced upon the land since the industrial evolution? Or do we go further back, and try to restore nature to the way it was before agriculture was widespread? This choice could imply the sacrifice of large areas of biodiverse heathland to natural succession. One might even argue that we should support the development of ‘de-extinction’ technologies? After all, animals like the woolly mammoth and sabre-toothed cats might have gone extinct due to human hunting activities.

This is one of only many difficult questions investigated in the field of environmental philosophy. It handles questions that can be complex and often have no unambiguous answer. Still, the ways in which we answer them shapes the practice of nature conservation.

–Merijn van den Bosch

Sources

Much of the content of ‘Lessons from history’ is found in:
-Callicott, J.B and Nelson, M.P., The Great New Wilderness Debate. Georgia: University of Georgia Press, 1998, 697 p.
-Callicott, J.B and Nelson, M.P., The Wilderness Debate Rages On. Continuing the Great New Wilderness Debate. Georgia: University of Georgia Press, 2008, 723 p.

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(Image credit: BAM Construction and CIRIA)

With construction and development essential for continued economic growth, it is crucial that the current upward trend does not come at the expense of the natural environment. Further awareness of the relationship between natural systems and a strong economy has led to organisations developing plans and strategies that integrate both economic and environmental targets.

An essential part of an organisation meeting environmental targets is to ensure that biodiversity becomes an integrated part of construction planning and projects. At present there is still some uncertainty surrounding incorporating biodiversity into projects with many viewing it as a topic only suited to technical experts.

This is where the BIG Biodiversity Challenge plays a unique role, allowing organisations to reach environmental targets whilst raising awareness and training members of staff. The challenge has a simple message of ‘do one thing’ for biodiversity which demonstrates that enhancements can be simple, affordable and achievable. These biodiversity enhancements can range from installing bat boxes and bug hotels through to detailed action plans and management strategies.

Now in its third year the challenge has continued to grow with new award categories launched to reflect the dynamic nature of the industry and focusing on the core areas of infrastructure, urban development and mineral extraction.

The 2016 award categories include:

• Client Award
• Community Engagement Award
• Large Scale Permanent Award
• Medium Scale Permanent Award
• Small Scale Permanent Award
• Maintenance & Management Award
• Pollinator Award
• Temporary Award

The BIG Biodiversity Challenge is free to enter and the deadline is August 8, with the 2016 awards ceremony taking place on September 15 in a central London venue. There are also fantastic sponsorship opportunities for organisations wanting to be involved in this year’s Awards ceremony. For further information on how to enter, and to be inspired by last year’s entries, please click to visit www.bigchallenge.info

Michael Small, Project Manager, CIRIA

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(Image courtesy of Bigstockphoto.)

The marketing profession has been absent from the sustainability debate

Many biodiversity professionals have undoubtedly followed events at the recent COP21 in Paris, where the UN climate talks resulted in some groundbreaking agreements. The private sector certainly seems more engaged in the sustainability debate. Leading consumer companies and retailers are publicly supporting global initiatives for renewable energy and zero net deforestation. It provides hope for the much needed transformation of agricultural production worldwide. However, this must be matched by a paradigm shift in consumer behavior, especially for the consumption of food and basic household products. Some observers have been keen to spot that, despite the presence of high profile corporate CEOs, the marketing profession has been noticeably absent, even though marketers have a vital role to play in informing and shaping consumer sentiment.

The palm oil sector is a good example of how changing consumption patterns, in tandem with corresponding EU food regulation, can have a tremendous effect on swinging the pendulum towards sustainable production: 20% of global palm oil production is now certified and this is set to double by 2020.

Consumer understanding of the link between sustainability and palm oil is still patchy and the marketing profession has done little to address this issue. Where indeed are the marketers?

Are turkeys voting for Christmas?

It seems obvious to think this is the case for a profession that sprung from the economic boom decades of the 50’s and 60’s and is seemingly dedicated to the continuous rise of private consumption. But such an oversimplification is not warranted, as marketing has become more of a victim of its own success. The essence of marketing is about crafting and communicating what an organization or individual has to offer. So, given the explosion in communication tools with the Internet, we are all involved in some form of marketing at some stage. It is certainly no longer purely the domain of consumer goods, and most of the expansion has focused on other sectors, from charities to celebrities to nation branding. Some of the founding fathers of the profession have been calling for ‘de-marketing’ to include the environmental perspective and for “creating shared value,” but such thinking has been slow to permeate a discipline that is now so fragmented and ubiquitous.

Marketing or communication?

The reality in today’s world of social media and online conversation is that a lot of marketing communication is done by non-marketers with no or little formal training in the art of integrated marketing. In fact, the question should be asked whether the term marketing still aptly describes activities that can include social media management, crisis communication and fundraising. There are fewer pure marketers and more and more specialists and consultants in a sector that has been diluted and industrialized through the abundant use of digital tools and outsourcing.

Digital distraction

In these turbulent times of constant technological advance, we must all adapt and keep upgrading our know-how, whether you are a researcher, a manager or a manual worker. The marketing sector has been affected to a greater extent, as this trend has impacted its core skill set, and it is struggling to keep pace.

It is fair to say that marketing is going through an identity crisis. Given the above developments, it is lacking in focus and direction. Despite its growing reach, the profession has suffered from a declining image and credibility. Professional bodies, such as the AMA American Marketing Association and CIM Chartered Institute of Marketing have been unable to reverse the trend. This decline has been publicly lamented by leading marketing authors including Philip Kotler and Malcolm McDonald, who suggested: “the discipline of marketing is destined to become increasingly less influential unless there is some kind of revolution.”

There seems to be a consensus among marketing academics and practitioners that to regain a position of influence where it matters most—in the board room—the profession must counter its perceived short-termism. Marketers must put much more emphasis on its essential strategic function: to deliver innovative offerings to the marketplace that will satisfy the needs of today’s and tomorrow’s consumers, and benefit the long-term prosperity of the organization and society. “Marketing can change the world,” according to Hugh Davidson, provided the marketing community rises to the challenge of this fundamental visionary leadership role.

Lessons for conservationists

What can conservationists learn from the diverse and pervasive status of marketing? To emulate would be the best approach, given that multidisciplinarity and communication are fundamental to the progress of the biodiversity and sustainability agendas.

Effective communication must become a core skill in science education and research. Science communication is a growing field, but the scientific community will have to break free of the shackles of over-specialization, fuelled by the outdated ‘publish or perish’ ethos of the academic elite. Public access to scientific research should be universal and free: the process of widening access has been too slow. This may impact on the image and status of the scientific community, but just as with the marketing profession, it will benefit the cause of science and conservation in the long run.

About the author

Biodiversity Professionals member Barbara de Waard is a marketing coach and founder of Biodiversity Business, a social enterprise dedicated to creating shared value for biodiversity and business through conservation travel and supply chain transformation to save endangered species.

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Introduced mallard ducks (left) regularly mate with native grey ducks (right) in New Zealand. Males of either species often opt to mate with females of the other species. Is this mutual appreciation for the exotic wayward, or do they have something to teach us? (Images courtesy of Wikipedia Creative Commons)

Many of us have built entire careers out of identifying which introduced species inconvenience natives. We explore and quantify their effects, and then crow about how important it is to rid ourselves of these ‘invasive’ nuisances.

So, for some, it is with considerable trepidation that they witness this complacent formula starting to unravel in recent years. Study after study, across discipline after discipline, is showing that introduced species are not, and never were, as bad as we thought.

An aging rear guard has devoted itself to the defense of old-school nativism, with all its irregularities, quirks and eccentricities. But many of us can now see that that ship was flawed all along and is now best abandoned.

Let’s learn to live with introduced species, not because it’s a novel or contrarian view, but because it has become the most compelling and sane thing to do.

Reasons to appreciate introduced species

Here are five good reasons why:

1. More diversity. In general, introduced species increase local and regional species richness. Most islands, for example, have doubled their lists of plant species through introductions. Longstanding nightmares of ecosystems dominated by single species, while common in agricultural landscapes, are the exception in the wild. Let’s stop talking about species like kudzu as if they were representative.
2. More uniqueness. A fixation on species-level biodiversity has fostered the impression that we are losing uniqueness. This assumption is flawed. While species have gone extinct (sometimes due, in part, to introduced species), our ecosystems are every bit as unique as they always were. Native ecosystems are unique, but so too are novel ecosystems, comprising biota that have never lived in the same configurations in history.
3. More evolution. Change is continuous and countless recent studies investigating rates of evolution show that it happens a lot faster than we used to think. Both native and introduced species don’t care about our historical baselines and are actively breeding and (de)selecting themselves away from them. Much like technological innovation in times of crisis, evolution seems to be speeding up in response to the environmental changes we have wrought. I’m going to go out on a limb and say that this is a good thing and that trying to stop it might actually be damaging to the vitality of future ecosystems.
4. More nature. We ask people to explore and cherish nature, but so much of the nature they experience around them is the ‘wrong’ kind. Introduced genes, species, and ecosystems are everywhere, permeating everything.
   The search for purity is more than an embarrassment now. We risk disenfranchising a whole generation of people by constantly pointing to the belief that real nature is always somewhere else.
5. More compassion. Over the last few decades, people have blamed introduced species for just about every environmental malady you could think of. We have been told (and told ourselves) that they are the perpetrators of undesirable processes and states again and again.

The truth is that introduced species are as much the victims of globalisation as native species, having little choice over their location, and no choice over their valuation, but having to suffer the consequences all the same. Scapegoating introduced species is a tired, unethical pastime.

For a more detailed examination of the arguments raised in this article consider reading my recently completed PhD thesis: The Reconciliation of Introduced Species in New Zealand.

Disclaimer: The views and opinions expressed in this article are those of the author alone.

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Researcher with wild chinchilla, Chile.

Their conservation status is due to exploitation of the animal for fur. According to Meadow (1969), “…the disappearance of the once beautiful chinchilla alarmed the South American governments of Chile, Peru, Bolivia, and Argentina. By 1918 all of them had placed an embargo on exportation of chinchilla furs, and had laws against trapping the animal.” Both species were thought to be extinct in the wild.

In the mid-1970’s, long-tailed chinchillas were re-discovered near Illapel, Chile. This discovery led to a reserve being created in 1983. However, the long-tailed chinchillas’ wild population continues to decline. Its habitat is threatened by human land alterations. Less than half of the wild population lives within the National Chinchilla Reserve. The areas where we have made habitat have seen expansion in these colonies, outside of protected areas.

The short-tailed chinchillas were re-discovered in 2001 in Chile. Of the 11 known, six were taken into the lab for experiments. They were supposed to be returned to the wild. The ones that did not die were given to fur farmers to improve the genetic captive stock.

Researcher with wild chinchilla, Chile.

Thank you so much for your support!

Amy Deane, Scientist
Save the Wild Chinchillas, Inc.
www.wildchinchillas.org
International Union for the Conservation of Nature, Species Survival Commission http://www.iucn.org/
Small Mammals Specialist Group http://www.small-mammals.org/

PLEASE SIGN ONE OF THESE PETITIONS
English http://www.thepetitionsite.com/es-es/957/633/004/demand-the-protection-of-the-wild-chinchillas-in-chile/

Spanish http://www.thepetitionsite.com/es-es/803/812/650/la-demanda-de-proteccin-de-chinchillas-salvajes-en-chile/

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Indigenous communities can play a pivotal role in the success of a conservation program. (Image courtesy of junglephotos.com)

However, many officially protected areas suffer from neglect, poor management, and corruption. This new research emphasizes the pivotal role local communities could play in addressing these shortcomings. From their analysis of villages in a region in Papua New Guinea, the researchers conclude: “…local monitoring contributes to effective protection and deters unregulated exploitation,” and that, “Clearly, local people are effective in protecting large areas in a relatively natural state.”

Giving local people a stake in the protection and restoration of their surrounding area could make all the difference, even to established conservation programs. The bottom-up approach can provide the community with much-needed jobs through ecotourism, sustainable harvesting and conservation area protection. In turn, local jobs help to prevent migration to urban areas, and lessen the pressure to engage in slash-and-burn agriculture or to sell out to the highest bidder, which may be a mining or lumber company, or big agriculture.

We certainly need new and thoughtful approaches, since the past half century of business as usual has got us nowhere.

References
Sheil, D., M. Boissière, and G. Beaudoin. 2015. Unseen sentinels: local monitoring and control in conservation’s blind spots. Ecology and Society 20(2): 39.
http://dx.doi.org/10.5751/ES-07625-200239
See also Mongabay: Local stewardship: conservation’s ‘vast blind spot’

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