Wildlife, biodiversity and climate
A habitable climate depends on wildlife and biodiversity, because:
- Climate is a consequence of biodiversity and biodiversity is everything that ecosystems represent to life on Earth;
- A stable climate and therefore, a habitable Earth, depends on stabilising ecosystems; and
- Animals are the only mechanism that can do that.
As wildlife declines, we are breaking down biodiversity structure and losing energy (in the form of carbon) out of food chains and into the atmosphere and ocean. This way, climate and our food security are inextricably linked. We’re not only stripping soils of the material needed to feed us, we’re also introducing chaotic free energy into our atmosphere and causing huge fluctuations in the weather. The latter makes it harder for us to know when, where and how to feed ourselves.
Climate change: fossil fuels v. wildlife
Climate change has always been the symptom of biodiversity loss … that’s to say, the breakdown of the complex connectivity between lifeforms that allows Earth to flex in response to changing conditions.
Only recently have we created artificial climate change by mining carbon buried deep underground by animals millions of years ago. The animals that did that are no longer around and today’s animals, that would be busy moderating modern-day carbon, have populations that are heavily depleted.
We cannot engineer our way out of this crisis. We can only rebuild ecosystems rich in a diversity of animal life.
Latest posts about why the oceans are important
Why is Queensland flooding? Climate models couldn’t predict it. Climate scientists are saying that the water cycle is intensifying twice as fast as models suggest. Many of us who observe nature aren’t that surprised. Wildlife, and its role in ecosystem-building and maintaining a habitable world, barely registers in the public psyche. Yet it is supremely important.
If you live somewhere that’s flooding regularly and you want it to stop, then your only hope, is to invest in wildlife conservation. You could begin by saving koalas!
Why are koalas vital and what has this to do with the Queensland floods?
Threatened with extinction Koalas can no longer play a crucial role in the ecology of Australia’s landscape. But two hundred and fifty years ago koalas dominated almost the entire eastern seaboard. Back then they would have had a huge impact on forests and grassland, alongside other megafauna like kangaroos and people.
The wholesale destruction of wildlife is almost singly responsible for why you won’t be able to get your house insured in future
Abundant and diverse animal life is the sole mechanism for building complex natural systems. By creating soil, koalas (along with people and other animals), made a habitable environment for themselves. It was an environment that soaked up moisture. Europeans settled in Australia at a time when the land was already blanketed in a thick, friable soil layer.
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Twenty most important animals that might save our planet’s ecosystems
A paper just published in the journal Ecography identifies the impact of animals on global ecosystem processes. Researchers used data from the International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN).…
Where do Queensland’s floods come from?
This year is almost the perfect storm of conditions for eastern Australia. La Niña brings more wet weather to the coast. Climate change has warmed the atmosphere and this means it can carry more moisture. The final bit, which you may not know about, is the effect of soil moisture.
Judith Schwartz talks about this in her book The Reindeer Chronicles. Dust repels moisture. For over two hundred years we have been stripping soil of nutrients and killing the animals that would have restored it. South American rainforests can exist only because forest soil is replaced by large animals faster than it disappears. The same goes for all landscapes, anywhere on the planet. This is also why we can’t buy ourselves out of this mess by planting trees – we need wildlife rich habitats and we’re allowing corporates to simultaneously destroy those with bulldozers.
Heavy rainfall occurs when moisture is unable to soak into the land. It builds up in the atmosphere and when it’s blown over hillsides it condenses into storms. Before all this climate chaos we built dams to contain moisture and feed our cities. Now, we’ve reached a point where infrastructure engineers can no longer be relied upon.
The wholesale destruction of wildlife is almost singly responsible for why you won’t be able to get your house insured in future, or your farms can no longer afford to grow your food. To rebuild we need ecosystem engineers. We need animals.
What is climate change?
Climate change isn’t one thing. The consequence of energy lost from where it’s useful (in ecosystems) to where it’s of no use, we call climate change. When it’s of no use, it becomes floods, atmospheric CO2 and ocean acidification. Climate change is the final symptom of ecosystem collapse. Wildlife is the only mechanism to rebuild ecosystems, so conservation is our only hope.
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Biodiversity and Climate Change: the IPBES-IPCC report and the importance of wildlife
The Biodiversity and Climate Change IPBES-IPCC report came out last week with delegates confirming the over-riding view that the two are connected. It’s a step forward but the report does…
When we deforest habitat we aren’t just removing trees, we are removing animal life. It is this impact from animals that adds up to an extraordinary, invisible and largely unnoticed consequence for humanity.
It’s not insignificant. Elsewhere in this blog I’ve written about the role of marine vertebrates in Australia’s bushfires. It was migratory Blue Whales and a supporting cast from tuna to sharks, seabirds and lantern fish, that contributed up to a third of all ocean mixing in the Banda Sea in 2019. This lowered planetary temperatures but caused the fires that wiped out entire communities in eastern Australia. The impact of the animals was enormous. If we were to let Blue Whales go extinct, we would get worse floods too!
Only wildlife can fix Queensland flooding
Humans have literally no capacity to fix this problem by themselves. For reasons explained eloquently by Elizabeth Kolbert in Under a White Sky, we can’t solve problems caused by people, by using the same approaches that caused the problems in the first place.
If you’re asking ‘why Queensland is flooding?’ you should ask if wildlife conservation offers more hope. Animals, collectively, can resolve these crises quite quickly if we allow them to. And this is because only animals can build ecosystems.
The point of ecosystems is to become so complex, that the processes housed within, can act like valves. These are able to withstand most natural variation in the outside world. It’s how Earth regulates the flow of energy and dampens extremes. The signs are the biodiversity could alleviate the intensity of climate events by a third or even a half. This also buys us time to get our carbon use under control.
Remember, you evolved as one of the animals that regulates energy, and builds ecosystems. You can’t exist without ecosystems, which means you can’t exist without other animals. Your connection to ecosystems and other animals is as vital to humanity’s survival as your head is to your body.
