Another day, another scientific paper implying that we should feel guilty about hunting prehistoric animals. Well apart from unnecessarily triggering people’s eco-anxiety, let’s be clear: humans are not responsible for prehistoric extinctions.
Science journals have become increasingly awash with titles that appeal to the masses. It’s about optimising readership through search engines. But it’s also feeding a general malaise which is profoundly and philosophically inaccurate.
Scholars like Paleoecologist Dr Jacqueline Gill have tried to make this point, even calling it out as racist, eugenics and illiterate, especially with regard to Indigenous wisdom. She says:
The idea that humans are a scourge, a virus, or a destructive force predestined to destroy the planet is racist, ahistorical, and unscientific. Humanity is not a monolith. It’s not that people are inherently bad for nature. It’s that many cultures have forgotten we’re part of it.
The vitriolic response she received on social media from that statement is a sign of how entrenched these ideas have become.
Animals both create and destroy, it’s in our nature
A paper in Science titled “Megafauna extinctions in the late-Quaternary are linked to human range expansion, not climate change” was promoted on LinkedIn a week ago. The conclusions stating that: ‘this study strongly supports Homo sapiens as responsible for the megafaunaThe largest animals that represent the top of the trophic pyramid. These are the final building blocks in ecosystem structures for maximum entropy production. Megafauna can be measured at any spatial scale. The largest animal that ever lived on Earth is the Blue Whale. In a grassland, spiders could be considered megafauna The term is generally reserved for animals larger More extinctions during the late-Quaternary.’
How can humans be responsible for something that happened 120,000 years ago? When our ancestors were living traditional lives, strongly connected to landscapes and the wildlife around them?
The paper also argues that climate was not the driver. But it looks at overall climate. This belies the true nature of animals and their role in 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.
Let’s not forget that animals exist within climatic niches that are highly localised. Change happens as soon as an animal arrives on the scene. In building a habitable place to live, they also immediately begin to alter local humidity and temperature, along with ecosystem structure and 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.
Large animals literally have a very big footprint on the Earth so the average lifespan of higher vertebrates is only between 200,000 and two million years[2]. Trampling the ground, ripping up vegetation and knocking over trees, changes things. The very basis of your existence and how all animals behave, is to alter one’s living environment and behaviour, to bring the two into some kind of alignment.
HOW ABORIGINAL PEOPLE MADE THE MOST SUCCESSFUL ECOSYSTEMS
Therefore, it’s just as likely (in fact quite likely) that megafauna created the conditions for their own demise. There is evidence this also made an opportunity for a new species (human) to thrive. Therefore, to blame humans for being animals is bizarre, yet that is the common preposition of many 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 papers.
To treat climate as a singular global issue is also to understate the relevance of animals and humans in the planet’s function. The matter of climate and megafauna are often reduced to two linear issues that are related in a more complex way than any scientist can properly deduce.
Climate change is more nuanced around animal impact
The United Nations just put up a poster about how climate change and biodiversityWhat is the definition of biodiversity? When we ask, what is the definition of biodiversity? It depends on what we want to do with it. The term is widely and commonly misused, leading to significant misinterpretation of the importance of how animals function on Earth and why they matter a great deal, to human survival. Here I will try to More are linked. It lead one respondent to say “Biodiversity can regulate the climate” but this is both true and untrue.
In the traditional definition of climate meaning globally overall, it cannot work. We need to stop burning fossil fuels and live more efficiently. In the sense of climate on a smaller scale (humidity, water cycles, food etc) it is entirely dependent on animals. The UN still haven’t got this quite right.
Meanwhile, this explains why scientists don’t find a link between climate and megafauna extinctions. It’s impossible. Such resolution of data simply doesn’t exist in the fossil record.
There is nothing ostensibly wrong with these papers except they don’t need to make accusations of responsibility. It undermines their real significance. Which is to say, small numbers of humans could have a huge impact (as indeed any animal can). Therefore, we also have the power to reverse this.
We cannot predict the future
The aforementioned paper finishes with a conclusion that says “Human-induced megafauna extinctions will have consequences for millions of years.” So what? All major animal groups alter the planet’s ecology, which is ever-changing under the impact of animals (humans included). There is no consequence, either good or bad, for the outcome of what occurred 120,000 years ago, that cannot be thought of as simply ‘natural.’
Simply put, humans are not responsible for prehistoric extinctions. That doesn’t, however, mean we aren’t responsible for the decisions we make today. Decisions that might help us survive better in the future.
Recently there was even fanfare about a study that shows how continental drift might wipe out mammals. In 250 million years! It’s one thing to stare into the past, but how can anyone justify popularising a paper that guesses what the future will be like, that far ahead?
What’s the point in beating ourselves up all of the time? It’s frankly a bit self-obsessed.
