Animal Impact

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What is Animal Impact?

Without wildlife, Earth would not be habitable for humans, because it’s animals that stabilise ecosystemsHow ecosystems function An ecosystem is a community of lifeforms that interact in such an optimal way that how ecosystems function best, is when all components (including humans and other animals) can persist and live alongside each other for the longest time possible. Ecosystems are fuelled by the energy created by plants (primary producers) that convert the Sun's heat energy More. It’s a fundamental law of nature that animals (and humans) exist because we are the most likely lifeforms to minimise environmental chaos(Of energy and ecosystems). Ecosystems are thermodynamically driven. Disorder occurs when energy dissipates and becomes more chaotic. For example, the release of hot air into the atmosphere results in that energy is freer to disperse (maximum entropy). The opposite is true when energy is locked into biological processes, when it is stored inside molecules (minimum entropy). Stability in ecosystems occurs More. Animal impact, therefore, is a measure of how much all wildlife is collectively responsible for creating a habitable Earth.

The term “impact” describes the role that animals have in supporting nature-based solutions and ecosystem function–like a charity’s impact statement, the outcome is positive.

Animals, through their actions to stabilise ecosystems, create global food security and maximise carbon capture (creating climate resilienceReferring to an ecosystem’s ability to maintain a steady stable-state. The need to build resilience is entirely anthropocentric and symptomatic of ecosystems that are damaged or declining, leading to loss of ecosystem services on which humans depend. More). If we allow mass extinction to continue, even while addressing atmospheric carbon, the system will be too chaotic to support us.   

The first and most important thing to realise is, that human beings are high-order mammals. We came after all the other creatures. We live on the very rim of a network of processes that had to be established before we existed and in order to obtain nutrientsEnergy and nutrients are the same thing. Plants capture energy from the Sun and store it in chemicals, via the process of photosynthesis. The excess greenery and waste that plants create, contain chemicals that animals can eat, in order to build their own bodies and reproduce. When a chemical is used this way, we call it a nutrient. As we More at sufficient concentration, we needed animals to transfer(of nutrients) the thing that sets animals apart from plants, is that they can move. Some of the biggest migrations on Earth every day, are the movement of insects like caterpillars, from the stem of a plant to a leaf and back, before turning into butterflies and transferring the energy elsewhere. Large-scale migration of grazing animals and migratory songbirds moves More, amplifyAmplification (of nutrients and energy). Animals consume plants and other animals and in doing so, reintroduce important energy-containing nutrients back into the environment, at even higher concentrations and in patches. Amplification of energy is driven by migration and happens at every scale, from insects moving daily in and out of your vegetable patch, to African wildebeest herds and the seasonal More and concentrate the planet’s energy (nutrients), so we have enough to feed ourselves.

The story of Animal Impact, justifies why we have to conserve animals and how conservationWhy is animal conservation important? Animal conservation is important, because animals are the only mechanism to create biodiversity, which is the mechanism that creates a habitable planet for humans. Without animals, the energy from today’s plants (algae, trees, flowers etc) will eventually reach the atmosphere and ocean, much of it as carbon. The quantity of this plant-based waste is so More is absolutely essential for the future of the human race. 

This will be the subject of my forthcoming book, so make sure you sign up to my mailing list.

A more detailed overview of the science

• Plants capture the Sun’s energy and create massive amounts of waste and heat (enough to cause mass extinctionAnimal life hasn't existed for very long on planet Earth. In the last 500 million years, there have been five mass extinctions, defined as events that wiped out at least 75% of animal life. The Devonian mass extinction is considered to have been caused by the rise of plants on land, which polluted the oceans in the absence of animals. More in the Devonian, before land animals evolved). 
• Herbivores graze this excess and after about six steps in the trophic pyramidThe gradual reduction in energy content, increase in body size and reduction in number of animals, that occurs the higher you go up the food chain. At the base of the pyramid are a vast number of high-metabolism, tiny creatures and at the summit, are the top predators. To be stable, the pyramid has to have creatures at all levels. More, enough of this free surplus energyThe energy of a system that is emitted as waste and is not part of ecosystem processes. There is always some free surplus energy as this creates the basis for evolution where new species exploit gaps in the ecosystem where free energy becomes available. Surplus energy can occur as a result of disruption or disturbance. When free surplus energy reaches More is entrained into biological processes. FSE release increases system entropyThe degree of disorder or chaos in a system, most often used to describe thermodynamic energy but also used the behaviour of information. All else being equal, physics determines that all matter and energy moves towards chaos, therefore biological systems are in a continual state of battling against entropic forces in order to remain stable. The most stable ecosystem is More and leads to pollution and destabilisation of the chemical pathways. It’s the reduction in nutrients that balances things like climate and soil fertility. If you take the animals away, the resulting increases, cause ecosystem chaos and collapse. 
• It’s not the number of species, or even so-called “keystone” species that matter. To stabilise ecosystems, requires an abundance of animals in the right proportions. When Maximum Entropy ProductionWhere an ecosystem achieves a steady stable-state with the maximum possible number of species and there is very little free surplus energy because it is all consumed inside biological processes. Entropy dictates that all matter moves towards chaos but animal life enables ecosystems to continually move in the opposite direction. Reaching a state of maximum entropy production is essential for More (MEP) is achieved (this takes about 25 million years), free surplus energy is minimised leading to resources that are predictable in time and space – this is how animals know where to forage (the evolutionary process is hand in glove – entropy processes also drive evolution of behaviour and speciation). 
• The primary reason animals are the only mechanism that can minimise chaos, is because they are mobile. Migration, at any scale, is the pivotal mechanism for ecosystem stability. Plants cannot achieve this, because they are both sedentary and such powerful primary producers, that they create massive amounts of residual energy and waste. 
• Humans can only exist within the animal domain, not the plants. We evolved as part of the MEP process that stabilised ecosystems, and we’re part of it. We cannot exist without our supporting cast of animals. This is because our metabolism requires access to predictable resources at suitable concentrations to feed ourselves and our entire farming and fisheries are built on the spatial redistribution of nutrients by animals. 
• The MEP function(Of an ecosystem). A subset of ecosystem processes and structures, where the ecosystem does something that provides an ecosystem service of value to people. More that animals do, is to transfer, amplify and concentrate nutrients where and when other animals (including humans) expect it. That’s how the most fertile farmland and rich fisheries came into being. In the oceans, this transfer mechanism has declined massively.  
• As we destabilise ecosystems by driving animals to extinction, we release more and more free energy into lower trophic levels, where patches become less concentrated and less predictable, meaning a more chaotic ecosystem. This leads to a break down in the information needed by animals to find food (this is why we end up with unpredictable and changing wildlife distributions).      
• Conservation is beset with the need to conserve animals but considers their role as one that is based on ecosystems … the truth is, animals are critical to ecosystem stabilisation and the sole mechanism that made ecosystems habitable for humans and animals alike. 
• Animals, therefore, create global food security and maximise carbon capture (creating climate resilience). If we allow mass extinction to continue, even while addressing atmospheric carbon, the system will be too chaotic to support adequate food security.