Population, land use, and 1 million species.
Over at Earth.com, Michael Dhar writes that curbing population growth is a necessary (though not sufficient) step toward a sustainable future: By reigning in overconsumption, enacting sustainable practices on farms and in the oceans, slowing population growth, seriously tackling climate change, and adopting other approaches, humanity can save millions of species - and ourselves.
According to a UN report this spring, 1 million species could be driven to the point of extinction if we don't change our current course.
Loss of habitat is the number one threat to species, and habitat loss is largely the result of human population growth.
In the United States, Congress has decided that our population will continue to spike far into the future, with no debate about the impact on the ecosystems that sustain human and non-human life on this piece of Earth that we are responsible for.
"Most of the Ballgame" - a local example
The great chronicler of the Chesapeake Bay Watershed, Tom Horton, writes that "land use is most of the ballgame in our estuary" and efforts to restore the Bay face daunting challenges "in light of no population-control policies at any level of government, or even among most environmental groups."
According to Pew Research, Congress will use immigration policy to grow the U.S. population by 100 million by the year 2065.
Horton's piece looks at how the loss - or return - of just one species (the beaver) can radically impact an ecosystem: No creature on Earth, save for modern humans, has more capacity to transform a landscape; and in designing a landscape that produces excellent water quality, the beaver has no equal.
Beavers ruled the hydrology of North America for a million years or more, until just the last few centuries, when fur trapping reduced populations from an estimated 100 million or more to less than half a million. In the Chesapeake, from millions to thousands is a fair estimate.
Through damming and ponding, beavers stanched the shedding of water from the watershed, cleansed it, filtered it, held back floods, let rain soak in to keep water tables high and streams running even in drought. They created luxurious habitats for a stunning variety of amphibians, fish, waterfowl and mammals.
In recent decades, beavers have come back to the point where a solid body of science in Canada and the United States confirms they were this continent's most important keystone species - a species whose functioning underpins a whole ecosystem.
An endangered conversation
Dhar and Horton are raising issues that desperately need to be considered by the nation and our elected leaders, none of whom feel any urgency to set immigration policies at levels that would allow for eventual population stabilization and the preservation of critical habitat and species.
As Horton reports, there is no leadership to be found among the large environmental groups or political parties. We have to lead.
Keep the conversation going
Thank you for all that you do,
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