A new paper published in the journal Ecological Indicators proposes that we use indices of species’ potential range to inform conservation status (Mason et al, 2021). Findings like these should be major contributions to a new direction for 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.
Why is it so important?
Most decisions we make in conservation, from the prioritisation of money for wildlife protection to planning authorities’ decisions about land development, are based on IUCN Red List(of endangered species). A list of current conservation status for all the world’s known species. The list is administered by the International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN) and the data is fed into by national and international organisations to be continuously updated. More criteria, a scale of “extinction risk”.
Once animals become rare, their contribution to ecosystemHow 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 processes has already collapsed enormously. For example, North American Lesser Prairie Chicken (below) occupies between 1-2 ha and moves an average of 430m every three days, day in, day out. It eats mostly crickets, locusts and grasshoppers. The conversion of prairie to agriculture in the late-1800s resulted in massive locust plagues.
The few species of Prairie Chicken are listed as either “vulnerable” to extinction or “least concern”. That is to say, the birds aren’t going to go extinct any time soon, either because their population is stable or their natural range remains huge, even if their numbers are few.
The recent paper focuses on UK birds and finds:
Eighteen species assigned ‘least concern’ status by the GB regional IUCN Red List had much narrower realised than potential ranges, suggesting that their ranges are in a more degraded state than currently recognised by Red List criteria (Mason et al, 2021).
The absence of birds has direct consequence for human food production which is inevitably linked to carbon capture and climate, since the two are inextricably connected.
It should make little or no sense to use rarity as a conservation measure, as it is entirely unrelated to human survival – we are, whether we like it or not, all part of the planet’s ecosystem 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.
This is a great paper that makes an extremely important contribution. However, despite its merits, it still focuses on the impact of humans on animals and fails to identify the impact of animals on humans in terms of food security and climate stability*. This at a time, when the UK is 30-40 years away from ‘eradication of soil fertility’, according to its own government.
It could do better, by recognising the critical importance that birds will play as part of trophic systems to recreate soil structure for future organic farming in the UK. Without healthy wildlife populations at the right proportions across the entire farming landscape there won’t be food security in 50 years time– a trend iterated across the planet.
