It’s a tough gig being a conservationist. Every twenty minutes an animal or plant is becomes extinct. Half the species on Earth are expected to be gone by 2100. Rhinos, Penguins and Orangutans are the prime candidates. I find the photo of the last Tasmanian Tiger particularly haunting. Australia’s annual “Threatened Species Day” marks the anniversary of its demise on 7 September 1936. And whilst just a few hundred Numbats survive, human numbers keep climbing. The world population clock details this incessant rise.
Last time I looked, it was heading towards nine billion – no wonder wildlife habitat continues to shrink. Every generation now inherits less biodiversity, their expectations of “life on earth” decline accordingly. Should we curl up in a corner and rock from side to side in despair? Possibly…but there are good news stories too.
Campaigns have saved some of Australia’s favourite places. National icons such as Ningaloo Reef, the Daintree and the Franklin River would have been despoiled if not for people power. Some “lost” species are even being “re-found”. Australia’s Night Parrot hadn’t been seen for almost 80 years. When one was tagged and released in 2015 it was described as “the bird watching equivalent of finding Elvis flipping burgers in an outback roadhouse”. The Fernandina Galápagos Tortoise was also rediscovered in 2019, having been “missing” for 113 years and locally, the New Holland Mouse vanished for over a century before being spotted again in Ku-ring-gai National Park in 1967.
Even extinct animals might soon be brought back from the dead. Melbourne scientists are working on creating a Thylacine embryo using gene editing technology whilst Harvard University researchers are trying to develop a mammoth hybrid.
Positive news resources which help boost resolve exist too. The Optimist Daily website and @waterbearnetwork on Instagram will feed you a diet of good news stories: from AI technology preventing ship and whale collisions to a fungus that eats plastic pollution.
I’ve written an article on the Conservation Optimism platform imploring a famous UK football team to conserve the bird featured on its team crest. Read it here. There are also some amazing “rewilding” projects, which are bringing cleared and desolate areas back to life. “Greening Australia” performs landscape restoration on a massive scale, covering millions of hectares and protecting hundreds of species.
If you’re feeling depressed by the state of the world, positive activism is a great antidote. “It’s better to light a candle than curse the darkness”. Psychologists also recommend exercise, healthy diet, good sleep, socialising, spending time in nature and getting your hands dirty. There’s actually a microbe in the soil which increases serotonin levels (turns out gardeners are happiness junkies)!
This verse has helped many a protestor from becoming overwhelmed: God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference.
But Monty Python’s, Eric Idle, puts things into true perspective: “Our galaxy itself contains a hundred billion stars. It’s a hundred thousand light years side to side. It bulges in the middle, sixteen thousand light years thick. But out by us, it’s just three thousand light years wide”.
Earth seems somewhat insignificant. So, grab a Bucketty’s beer, embrace your Tawny and enjoy a laff…But keep on fighting till the last blade of native grass expires.
Enjoy that?
Of course you did! Be sure to catch up with all of Mal’s Wild Side and Environment focused articles here