From Plant Press, Vol. 5, No. 1 from January 2002.
By Robert DeFilipps
Stuart L. Pimm, noted environmental conservationist and author of the recent book “The World According to Pimm: A Scientist Audits the Earth” (2001, McGraw-Hill), presented a Systematic Biology Seminar on 1 November in Baird Auditorium. Pimm, Professor of Conservation Biology at the Center for Environmental Research and Conservation, Columbia University, New York, was introduced by W.J. Kress, Head of Botany. To audit is to examine and verify, and in this case the subject involves auditing the environmental state of the globe. His assessment and measurements of biodiversity have revealed an often startling state of affairs; Pimm’s cup runneth over.
We, the 6 billion people of the world, utilize or destroy 40 percent of the land’s annual production of plant growth; we use 50 percent of the available annual supply of freshwater; and our fisheries consume 33 percent of the ocean’s productivity. These trends could be at least partially reversed by more careful use of resources, although the extinct species we have previously decimated cannot be replaced. In fact, current species extinction rates caused by people are accelerating through 1,000 times the geological background rate. The background rate is one natural extinction per million species per year.
Despite these disturbing facts, he pinpointed a unique opportunity for collaboration between scientists and conservationists. We need more taxonomic and systematic studies in order to determine the details of precisely where the world’s biodiversity is concentrated. Armed with such information, the areas could be knowledgeably acquired by purchase for preservation. It is Pimm’s observation that it would require an outlay of only US$10 per hectare to buy out logging rights in parts of Brazil. By generalized extrapolations, according to Pimm all the world’s remaining tropical forests could be bought out for the sum of US$5 billion. Once that is accomplished, we could then devote ourselves to continued study and conservation of the rainforests in a more secure atmosphere. Efforts to keep forests intact at this juncture in world history may remind us of the words of the Sicilian author Giuseppe Tomasi: “If we want things to stay as they are, things will have to change.”
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