Wherever I read about animals or discuss wildlife, conservationists are obsessed with the negative impacts we have on animals. It’s an unsurprising but human-centric view that biases judgement about 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 and undermines the very basis of what we’re trying to achieve. We’re not telling the right story.
Try searching online for the impact of migratory songbirds on farmland soil … all you will find are articles about the impact of farming on birds. This article “Why are birds more abundant on organic farms” says:
… bird diversity is greater and abundance is around 50% higher on organic than on conventionally-managed farms. Promoting organic farming could, therefore, enhance populations of farmland birds.
The statement is correct but only in a modified system. Obviously birds benefit from organic farming but the fertile soil we’ve lost was made by animals in the first place. It should more correctly say: “enhancing populations of farmland birds on organic farmland is key to recreating healthy soil on adjacent farms”.
The real story is that we need animals to have any future food security. Agrochemicals have destroyed soil integrity and cannot be relied on to feed a growing human population in future. It’s thought we only have 60 years of soil fertility left in the world so abundant animals (that recreate organic soil) will be the only solution.
This paper titled “Persisting Worldwide Seabird-Fishery Competition Despite Seabird Community Decline” says:
Enhanced competition was identified in 48% of all areas … Fisheries generate severe constraints for seabird populations on a worldwide scale.
Again, within the context of a modified ocean environment, where both fisheries and seabirds have collapsed, the paper might be correct. But it omits to point out that seabirds have also been essential in nutrientEnergy 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 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, concentration and amplificationAmplification (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 over thousands of years, creating conditions for the fisheries in the first place. It should say “overfishing has increased the pressure on 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, meaning the seabirds required to support sustainable fishing, are coming under increased pressure from competition by fishing boats”.
If we’re to have future fisheries, we need to change the narrative to one where fishers understand that seabirds are not competitors. Same with farmland.
We haven’t done a very good job of understanding ecosystems. The vast majority of wildlife research is done through the post-impact lens, rather than considering what the results mean in terms of ecosystem processes.
Looking at the after-effects of a changed world, we almost literally can’t see the wood for the trees–our conclusions are biased in the extreme. The premise that animals are competitors to primary agriculture is absurd, yet it permeates even the most high-level conservation rhetoric.
It won’t help us value wildlife, save the human population or garner widespread support for conservation, if we continue to treat animals like victims and make them an inconvenience to farming and fisheries. Animals are not the icing on the cake. Wildlife is our only hope for rebuilding food security this century.
Subscribe to this website or follow and there’ll be plenty more examples to come. And help me by spreading the word, as a change in narrative is critical if we’re to have conservation make sense.
