Why do we need to conserve wildlife?

What will happen if all the animals on earth become extinct? Why do we need to protect endangered species? Why do we need to conserve wildlife? Why do we need animals in the first place?

These are questions that have occupied my thoughts for nearly thirty years and it’s only just recently, that I’ve begun to be able to respond (and is why I am writing the book about Animal Impact). These are not questions that can be answered by doing an experiment – Earth is the experiment. Research can give us glimpses into how animals work but why they matter and how they exist, is another thing altogether.

I credit the the way I interpret the natural world, to the many people who have spent time with me in the wild, observing nature in action. It’s almost always non-scientists who have the most unique perspectives on wildlife. People with vastly different backgrounds and experience also ask the difficult and fundamental questions that may seem trivial at first, but few scientists I’ve met can answer questions like “why are animals important to us?”

The beauty of nature is that we are animals and our behaviour and thought processes are so similar to other animals, that we are the living embodiment of what we need to know, to understand how 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 operate. What we need is a way to become aware of this and once we do, we will immediately realise that a habitable Earth is dependent on animals, wildlife more specifically.

What will happen if all the wildlife on earth becomes extinct?

The simple answer is this. The awesome amount of energy produced by plants will overwhelm ecosystems, diversity of processes will collapse and the benefits plants contribute, in terms of oxygen, carbon and nutrientA substance that contains the raw materials for life. At a chemical level, these are contained inside compounds that are absorbed into the body and essential energy-containing molecules are extracted, so that energy can be transformed into other chemical processes that use the energy for living. More cycles, will disappear. The release of this chemical energy into the biosphere without animals to moderate the excess, will pollute the ocean and kill most of the remaining animal life, including domestic livestock and animals we depend on for food. Soil fertility will rapidly disappear, climate will become irreversibly chaotic and the fate of our species will become instantly uncertain.

At current rates of decline, we have little more than a few generations before the sixth mass extinction. Even if animals don’t go completely extinct, their impact will be so minimal, as to be functionally extinct– meaning, they no longer contribute to stabilising our climate and food security.

Here’s a more technical answer if you’d like to read more:

Why do we need to conserve endangered species?

Years ago I would have answered this in the same way as most conservationists. Something like “because a world without animals is unimaginable”, or “because they have intrinsic value”, or “because they are important for pollination and seed dispersal”.

These days I’d make the answer much simpler: the need to conserve wildlife is because a habitable planet and the survival of the human race depends on it.

Ecosystems are built entirely by animals as without them, there is no life support or 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. Many of our most conspicuous endangered animals are 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. Most endangered animals are mobile, a feature that sets them apart from plants. Migration is what gives animals the chance 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 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, without which, human beings cannot find sufficient energy to fuel our bodies. This is the very definition of biodiversity.

If you ask, why do we need to conserve wildlife? It’s because the human race is facing an existential crisis and reintroduction of those animals back into the wild, will be the only way we can rebuild 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 and save our own species.

Here’s a bit of a technical commentary on what biodiversity means: