To be or not to be – saved that is. The quandary faced by Conservationists today is the many learned opinions by erstwhile and valued sages of the art – is how we produce Y objectives from X assets. X of course is the amount of conservation dollars against the need for millions more to conserve the myriad of expected extinctions to occur. How do we save the panda/tiger/quoll whilst saving the rainforests/numbat/Siberian tiger against the march of the money train to seek out more forests or plants to enrich more corporations?

 

And this is another dilemma. Without the corporations or the need for medicines such endeavours would never be pursued. Without the large bank of research dollars the bio-chemists would still be examining the many uses for penicillin. So how do we match the need as mentioned against the spate of extinctions that will occur and impact dramatically on the human race?

 

The world is warming up, that is undisputed, what is disputed is the reason. But as oceans increase in mass and warmer currents penetrate colder climes, the impact on phytoplankton will have a harming affect in the multiples’. At the bottom of the food chain its loss will denigrate each level and eventually reduce the seafood harvest we depend on.

 

Rainforests are disappearing at the rate of 2% per year. This is alarming as there are 250,000 plant species but only 5% have been screened for application to humans. The importance attached to this is - remember quinine, the bark of a tree that also gave us a cancer agent and aspirin. If ecosystems go – so do Homo sapiens. And this will happen as phytoplankton and rainforests produce all the oxygen we breathe.

 

And on the other side of the coin - as forests are destroyed and the resultant ecosystems   collapse, water tables will be fouled and soil will be contaminated. So how do we cut up the much smaller pie?

 

We need to create one conservation movement, not hundreds and operate it as a business. Funding provided by governments, corporations and individuals would be better spent if objectives and targets were set. We need new thinking for an old problem, or the alternative is a sixth extinction, ours!