Wild Things, Wild Places: Adventurous Tales of Wildlife and Conserving on Planet Earth. Jane Alexander, director of the Nova Scotia Endowment for the Arts

The former chair of the National Endowment for the Arts is Jane Alexander. She has served on the boards of Audubon, Wildlife Conservation Society and the American Bird Conservancy. Alexander wrote ” Wild Things, Wild Places: Adventurous Tales of Wildlife andConserving on Planet Earth.” She is a multi award winning actress and was nominated for an Academy Award. The views expressed in this commentary are her own. Read more opinion articles on CNN.

From my home in southwest Nova Scotia, I look out on the warming and rising Atlantic Ocean with alarm. This summer, the kelp forest, nursery to so many aquatic species, was bleaching out in its struggle to cope with temperature. The precious aquatic community continued to decline over time.

The beach by my home was a graveyard for eiders, guillemots, gulls, curlews and other birds, many of which succumbed to their own pandemic — avian flu — which has been devastating seabirds throughout Canada’s Atlantic provinces.

Many of the seed cone production that birds and insects depend on is at stake as my local spruce trees and other conifers are being replaced by deciduous trees.

Source: https://www.cnn.com/2022/12/09/opinions/cop15-world-biodiversity-alexander/index.html

The United Nations Convention on Biodiversity – What We Know About the Status of Birds, Galaxies, and Bald Eagles

The United Nations Convention on Biodiversity started this week in Montreal and I am a board member of the National Audubon Society.

As this vitally important convention gets underway, here is what we know: Because of human activity, life on Earth is undergoing an extinction crisis approximately 1,000 times faster than natural rates, according to a landmark study published in Conservation Biology. One million species are on the verge of extinction according to the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform. According to the Cornell Lab of Ornithology, North America has lost over a quarter of a billion birds since 1970, while BirdLife International shows half of all birds are declining.

We are taking holes out of the fabric of life on Earth to support our own lives. We depend on Earth’s varied and eclectic forms of life for things like food, medicine, clean air and water, mental health, inspiration and materials for great feats of art and engineering, and so much more.

Yet there is hope. bald eagles, peregrine falcons and other birds rebounded quickly from the crashes that occurred in the 20th century due to widespread use of the pesticide DDT, which caused eggshells to thin. They recovered because of the ban on the pesticide.

Source: https://www.cnn.com/2022/12/09/opinions/cop15-world-biodiversity-alexander/index.html

Climate Action and the Global Biodiversity Expansion: Calling on World Governments to Increase the Respect of Indigenous Peoples and Protect Biological Diversity

First, we must recognize, support and fund indigenous leadership. The World Bank believes that 80% of the world’s remaining plants and animals are in indigenous territories. In Canada, the Indigenous Guardians and Indigenous Protected Areas programs are having success in defending vast swaths of boreal forest.

Illegal logging, mining, land seizure, and other activities are the cause of threats to indigenous environmental activists. An investigation done by the investigative journalism organization Mongabay found that in the last four years dozens of indigenous environmentalists were killed in the Amazon basin.

Second, nature can help us solve the climate crisis, so let’s invest in climate solutions that are based in biodiversity and healthy natural ecosystems. In a world in which boreal forests cover only a small percentage of the surface, they act as sponges and absorb carbon from the atmosphere.

Third, world governments must commit to extraordinary action in the face of extraordinary circumstances. Too much is at stake so apathetic half-measures will not do. We need robust, meaningful commitments coming out of Montreal.

Among other things, committing funding will get the job done. An analysis by the Paulson Institute estimated the biodiversity financing gap at an average $711 billion per year worldwide for 10 years. We also need to phase out subsidies for nature destruction and greenhouse gas emissions in order to work on them.

Another example of ambitious thinking and action is the 30 by 30 initiative, which challenges world governments to protect 30% of lands and oceans by 2030. The United States and Canada are two countries that support this goal.

Source: https://www.cnn.com/2022/12/09/opinions/cop15-world-biodiversity-alexander/index.html

Rejuvenation and Conservation: The Case Against Extinction in the Pacific Northwest and Namibia as a Model for Sustainable Biodiversity

At my Nova Scotia home, I’ve found a partner in restoration and rejuvenation: a beaver, who took up residence in my pond. There are many species of fish, turtles, and insects thriving because of the beaver dam. Canada was once threatened with extinction by overhunting for buros. Life finds a way if it’s given a chance.

But compared with the 2021 United Nations climate conference in Glasgow, or its follow-up meeting in Egypt last month, this gathering is getting little press coverage. And while there are some protesters in the streets of Montreal, the mass movement for biodiversity is far smaller than the one demanding climate justice.

The problem with spectacles of extinction is they obscure ongoing efforts to protect the biodiversity from the ground up. Throughout the plains of North America, for example, the Indigenous communities whose expertise the conservation movement has long ignored are returning bison to the prairie ecosystem. In Europe and North America, the rediscovery of the beaver is being supported by a network of private and public land managers. Where I live, in the Pacific Northwest, a small, not particularly flashy butterfly called the Fender’s blue inspired a collaboration that has not only recovered the species but helped restore its prairie habitat. And in Namibia, a leader in the worldwide community-led conservation movement, a national system of local conservancies has enabled those who live alongside endangered and other species to both participate in their protection and benefit from the resulting tourism and hunting opportunities. The country’s cheetah population has not been racing against extinction, but stable thanks to the hard work of the conservancy members.

Biodiversity protection is more complicated than climate protection, since it relies less directly on technology such as cheaper solar panels and has fewer clear measures of success.

So we dwell, with appalled fascination, on the northern white rhino, a subspecies that has only two surviving members — both female — and whose future may depend on the ability of reproductive scientists to turn skin cells into stem cells and eventually into viable sperm and egg cells. We wonder if de-extinction will ever succeed in creating a hybrid individual with genes from both extinct and existing species, but will never reverse extinction. Or we post and donate on behalf of vulnerable species on other continents, conflating our concern with effective action. Suzanne Brandon, a Ph.D. student in sociology who studied the experiences of “voluntourists” in Namibia, found that while they felt outrage about the overall plight of the species, they were largely unaware or dismissive of local conservation policies and practices.