Numbers, Noise, and Nonsense: We Must Stop Forcing Wildlife Off the Planet

• Dr. Karen I. Shragg
• July 25, 2023
• Forum Papers
• Forum Paper
• 0 Comments

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Numbers, Noise, and Nonsense: We Must Stop Forcing Wildlife Off the Planet

An NPG Forum Paper
by Karen I. Shragg
July 2023

Abstract: We are forcing wildlife off our planet in three basic ways: with our growing numbers, with our noise, and with our nonsense, defined as a refusal to create policies which follow the logic and the need to scale down the human enterprise. Furthermore, humans are tethered to the future of wildlife and wild places. This is not a whimsical, Disney-like desire to keep them in our forests, oceans, prairies and wetlands. It is a necessary requirement to do so for our own future. Nature, i.e., the very physics of our biosphere, must be respected for it means preserving our life-supporting soil, water and air quality. It is also key to our psychological well-being. We need nature and nature needs us, but you wouldn’t know it by our resistance to address the way in which we are growing too fast on a planet that has always had limits to growth.

WILDLIFE IN CRISIS EQUALS
HUMANS IN CRISIS

The wild animals were here first. To be sure, non-human life forms have collectively suffered extinctions before we ever evolved to present-day numbers and habits. Today modern humans are saddling wild creatures with even more misery. We are currently experiencing the 6th mass extinction on planet Earth. This time, however, is not about 6-mile-wide meteors striking the earth, or extensive ice ages, it’s about us. In 1963, the Bronx Zoo had a sobering exhibit which was just a mirror and it was labeled “The Most Dangerous Animal in the World.”

The problem is bad enough that there is now a day devoted to focusing on endangered species. The 3rd Friday in May is designated to be a day filled with sad stories of the precarious situations in which many iconic animals and many lesserknown ones find themselves.¹

If we follow the typical scenario, the wildlife community will address this crisis with a combination of proposals that include preserving individual tracts of land, restricting pesticides, increasing hunting regulations, and reducing carbon emissions. These efforts are not working and will never work because of human overpopulation, which is the fundamental driver of a growing list of endangered species, locally and globally.

In an article published by The Center for Biodiversity, “Halting the Extinction Crisis,” www.biologicaldiverisity.org, the authors  articulated what is going on with each species, and overall, state sobering information which should not be news to anyone: “Our planet now faces a global extinction crisis never witnessed by humankind. Scientists predict that more than 1 million species are on track for extinction in the coming decades.”

Humans are a part of nature, and we require a healthy biosphere, which we are rapidly destroying with our numbers, noise and nonsense. Our biosphere includes every life form from the deepest root systems of plants to the highest mountaintops and to the darkest realms of the ocean.²   …Continue reading the full Forum paper by clicking here.

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