From a key observer of life: a plea to save biodiversity

The other denial is to say, 'Wait, aren't human beings just part of nature? Aren't they just another extinction element?... The answer is really very simple: Before humanity came along, species were dying at a rate of about 1 per million, per year, and they were being born 1 per million per year. So, through time immemorial, things have been pretty much in balance.

Now we're speeding up the death rate of the species 1,000 times and we're lowering the birthrate. The cradles are being destroyed.

When you say humanity is a part of nature, so we're just an extinction agent... it's like saying the giant meteorite is part of nature. We don't want to be a force of mass destruction.

Scientists in many disciplines have a dual responsibility. They have to continue functioning as scientists, and that means that when they present evidence in the scientific journals they have to subject what they are claiming to peer review, and have all of the protocols of scientific research....

The second role is that of activist. And I believe that most scientists should be activists at least to the extent of making the work in their field more transparent, and the willingness to speak to an issue with the backup of the information that they obtain as scientists. And that's true all the way from global warming, which has drawn some of our finest scientists, to cloning, to genetically modified organisms. In fact, noting that half the legislation coming before Congress contains in it issues of importance from science, this is not an inconsiderable role to play.

We agreed at the [biodiversity] summit meeting at Harvard [last October] that it was plausible to try for a complete inventory of the world's species in 25 years. A lot of people think that's impossible, because in the last 250 years scientists have managed to catalog 1.8 million [species], maybe. And many scientists now estimate there are [around] 10 million species out there, or as [many] as 100 million.

So how are we going to do this? As in the human genome project, where the cost per base pair in getting the human genetic code kept dropping rapidly as technology advanced and more and more talented people got concentrated on it – in the same manner I'm convinced that the cost per species will drop, drop, drop, and more and more scientists will focus on it.

One by one – and this is what comes from science – we're identifying the most critical areas. The 25 [hot spots] the National Geographic is going to be covering [in an ongoing series] only cover about 1.4 percent of the land surface of the world. But if you save that 1.4 percent, we actually can save a large minority of the endangered species. And it's not that expensive.

The Defying Nature's End conference a year and a half ago at Cal Tech estimated that it would cost about $28 billion.

Once people see these creatures, and learn about them – wolves, African wild dogs, and you can go on down a long list – they become very [interested]. Kids love them. That's one of the great advantages we have in this whole field of biodiversity and conservation – namely that young people are biophilic. They really are attracted to larger creatures and nature.

My hope is that the more people hear and learn, the more they have a strong background in why it matters. They don't have to have a strong background in the science. But [understanding] why it matters, why certain parts of the world are these hot spots, and what's happening to the world, and that it's a creation, and that it's disappearing and we can save it for twice the cost of [Boston's] Big Dig – I think they'll get involved.

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