Humans keep culling animals of every kind

Have you been to the zoo recently? If you are forty years old or more you may find it astonishing that the London Zoo reports that the populations of land based species of animals has fallen by 25%, sea animals by 28% and fresh water animals by 29% all since 1970. In that time the population of one species of animal, homo sapiens has risen from around 3.8 billions to 6.7 billion so we know which species is making all the room for itself, like a cuckoo chick slowly pushing all the other chicks out of the nest.

It is easy to be sentimental about animals, and having good feelings about animals sometimes engenders good feelings about humanity as well. However retaining biodiversity is important to human beings because biodiversity is one of the many natural functions that makes our planet habitable for humans.

We need to have a full and healthy food chain, to enable the planet to process dead matter and waste. If it stays unprocessed it ends up poisoning us, so every fly, spider, mouse, cat, dog, lion, elephant, is important so is every plant and every other type of living matter, which all has its place in the complex scheme of our world.

The natural world is more than an excellent rubbish recycling centre which keeps our environment healthy. It also is a source of cures for human ailments. We often find new medicines from plants and animals, so creating the mechanisms to protect and preserve what we have both in terms of biodiversity and animal numbers is really a matter of self interest. We do not need to be enlightened to understand that.

Climate change is likely to mean the loss of more animals and plants and the extinction of more species. This works in several ways. As climates change the pace of change has usually been such that plants and animals could move or adapt, because historically change has taken place slowly. Even the impact of the great ice ages happened slowly, enabling relocation or adaptation of most species, including humans and their forebears.

Climate change caused by excessive fuel burning (as is likely the case) is causing change to happen so quickly, in climate terms, that animals and plants cannot migrate as quickly as the climate changes nor can they adapt or evolve so quickly.

It may be that in years to come the “Tree Museum” of Joni Mitchell’s “Big Yellow Taxi” will be franchised in every city along with a zoo franchise where rare animals (today still commonplace) will be kept in carefully controlled environments within enclosed buildings so that our grandchildren may all get some insight into what the earth was really like in the year 2008.