BIODIVERSITY

Threats To Biological Diversity:
A Scientific And Political Overview

by Elliott A. Norse

In the vastness of Creation, among 50 billion galaxies of 50 billion stars, our home--the Earth--is the only place we know of where life exists. We know that all this life has a fundamental unity, that the wisest scholar, the loftiest tree, the swiftest bird and the humblest bacterium all share an ancient, common origin. We know that from this basic unity has sprung a dazzling diversity of millions of living species. Our living planet is, indeed, a miracle, and knowing this can fill us with awe and reverence for Creation and the Creator.

But we also know two very distressing things about the Earth's biological diversity. One is that it is being destroyed very rapidly. In the next half-century--less than one human lifetime--the Earth could lose blue whales, giant pandas, tigers, black rhinoceroses and millions of lesser-known species. Entire ecosystem types, such as tropical dry forests, mangroves, and floodplain rivers could be damaged beyond repair. Our planet is now facing the most devastating biological catastrophe in the last 65 million years, since a huge asteroid hit the Earth and caused appalling damage, killing off the dinosaurs and more than half of the planet's other species. But today's mass extinction has a very different cause: the way we humans live our lives.

Fortunately, it is not the inevitable momentum of a mindless mass of rock that is destroying life on God's Green Earth. It is the Earth's most intelligent species. And while we have the power to kill off millions of other species, we also have the ability to distinguish right and wrong and to act in our own best interest. We can recognize our impact and change our course.

The fate of the Earth is a complex and difficult topic, one that is so daunting that we generally shy away from facing it. In the next few pages, I am going briefly to discuss biological diversity: what it is; why it is so important; why it is threatened; what the US has done to protect it; what is now happening in Congress; and what we must do to effectively protect biological diversity. I speak as a biological scientist who has studied living things since childhood, as a conservationist who has spent my career working to prevent extinctions, and as a Jew who is passionately devoted to celebrating God's Creation. What I can offer here only summarizes a much larger body of thinking, but if you understand its essence, you will know most of what you need to safeguard the diversity of life.

Why is Biological Diversity So Important?

Biological diversity is important for many reasons, but they can all be placed into two large groupings: for its own right, and for us.

Humans are only one of the Earth's 10, 30 or even 100 million species, and every other species was shaped over the course of 3.5 billion years from the same stuff by the same processes that shaped us. If we cherish Creation, we must recognize that the willows, eagles and bristleworms are all our siblings. It can be argued that our species is special and unique. That is true, but we are no more so than cheetahs that can accelerate faster than a sports car, king salmon that can circumnavigate an ocean and return to the very stream in which they hatched five years earlier or bolete mushrooms that can grow on dead wood and endure the fiercely Borgian competition in forest soil. Seen as a conservation biologist sees them, all species are astoundingly complex variations on the single theme of life, and none deserve to be driven to extinction by us.

Although Seattle, a 19th century Chief of the Duwamish Indians, was not a member of our particular tribe, an insight attributed to him has a distinctly Jewish feeling: "...to harm the Earth is to heap contempt on its Creator." If we humans are good because what made us is good, the same is true of all other species, the big, warm-blooded species with which we feel special kinship, as well as the ones we overlook and those that cause us problems. And while most species that have ever existed in the vastness of time are now extinct, it is hubris--or chutzpah--to believe that we possess the God-like wisdom to decide which species can survive and which can be condemned to extinction.

Much the same reasoning applies to the diversity of genes and ecosystems. We do not fully understand their importance, we did not make them and they are not ours to dispense with.

The second major reason to conserve biological diversity is what it does for us. In a world where people are plagued by hunger, disease, ethnic and religious strife, social upheaval, political oppression and extreme disparity in wealth, it is legitimate to ask why should we be concerned about the loss of biological diversity rather than concentrating on pressing human needs, such as economic development and national security. But there is a powerful answer: It is in our profound self-interest because we are inextricably tied to and utterly dependent on biological diversity. Every breath we take, every bite of food we eat and every drop of water we drink comes from the diversity of life.

Ecosystems perform services essential to our existence. They break down pollutants, build the soils on which humankind depends, protect coastlines from storms and maintain the composition of our atmosphere. Species from forests and the sea are the most exciting new sources of medicines. For example, a new potent anti-cancer medicine called taxol came from the bark of Pacific yew trees that have become rare because of logging. Taxol is particularly effective against breast and ovarian cancers, which have taken the lives of many thousands of Jews, such as the late comedian Gilda Radner. The only way to ensure that our medicine cabinet will be well-stocked is to maintain biological diversity.

It is important to protect living things for their own right, and because they are resources and life support systems that maintain conditions in which humans can survive and prosper. Without them, everyone would soon be starving, thirsting, roasting, choking for breath and drowning in our wastes.

What We Need to do to Maintain Biological Diversity

Just as decisions made by judges, prophets, and scholars thousands of years ago affect us daily, decisions now being made on our behalf and by us will touch the inhabitants of the Earth for thousands of years. This generation will chose between a planet rich with the diversity of Creation and a wasteland impoverished by our short-sightedness and greed. Our children, grandchildren and succeeding generations will have to live with the choices we made.

I believe that two eloquent quotes summarize all that we need to do to save our living planet. One, seldom-cited, is from Senegalese ecologist Baba Dioum, who said in 1968: "In the end we will conserve only what we love; we will love only what we understand; we will understand only what we are taught." The other is from 18th century British philosopher Edmund Burke: "The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing." To protect Creation, we must learn and we must act.

We can learn about the plants, animals and ecosystems with which we live. We can organize biodiversity educational events in our communities. We can study our rich Jewish traditions about protecting God's Creation. And we can keep ourselves informed about what is happening to biological diversity and monitor what our elected officials are doing about it. Synagogues, schools, and Jewish public affairs organizations can educate their members and the rest of the Jewish community about biological diversity and how we can live in ways that do the least harm to Creation. Every decision we make--not only how we vote but whether we buy a fuel-efficient car or a gas-guzzling 4x4--affects the fate of life on our planet.

We can roll up our sleeves to protect and restore wildlife habitats in our cities, rural lands, lakes, streams and coastal waters. We can support organizations that purchase lands for nature reserves, such as The Nature Conservancy; that fight to protect biodiversity laws, such as the Sierra Club Legal Defense Fund; and that encourage research to better understand how to protect biodiversity, such as the Marine Conservation Biology Institute. And we can exercise our will by voting for people and initiatives that will project, rather than destroy, God's Creation. Until recently, the Jewish community has not been a player in the movement to save biological diversity. Environmental organizations, good government organizations, medical associations, and fisherman's organizations have played central roles in defending the Endangered Species Act and other environmental laws. Now the Jewish community can make a difference by committing its formidable resources to help to maintain biological diversity.

Jews are not the most numerous people, and our votes count no more than the votes of others. But the ideas that have motivated us for four millennia have shaped and continue to influence what people do in the USA and worldwide. We have made a difference in helping the young, the elderly, the sick, the poor, our people and other people in need, here, in Israel and elsewhere. Now we need to extend our reach and make protecting Creation a central part of our mission. As people who strive to do what is good in fulfillment of our covenant with God, we must not stand by and allow ignorance, selfishness or carelessness to triumph over the diversity of life.