By Patti Wood

Biodiversity – the variety and variability of life on Earth – has been declining at an alarming rate over recent decades, mainly due to the harm caused by human activities. Although you could fill a book with the countless examples of this, the main culprits are destruction of habitat, climate change, pollution, overexploitation of the natural environment and the introduction of invasive alien species. Some of these activities have driven many species past the point of recovery.

According to a recent UN report, scientists are warning that one million species out of an estimated eight million, are threatened with extinction, many within decades. Some say we are in the middle of the sixth mass extinction event in Earth’s history. The last mass extinction wiped out most life on Earth.

We humans are so focused on the politics of the day, convenience or on our own creature comforts that we forget that we are just animals, warm-blooded vertebrate mammals to be specific. In our myopic lives, we lose sight of the fact that we live in an interdependent ecosystem that is designed to work for all of the animals, plants and other living things on this planet, not just for us.

Let’s look more closely at what’s driving the worldwide loss of biodiversity. Habitat loss seems to be No. 1. According to the Bureau of Investigative Journalism, over the past six years, more than 800 million trees have been cut down in the Amazon rainforest to make way for cattle ranching to satisfy the world’s demand for beef.

How much beef does your family consume? Are you OK with the destruction of one of the biggest nature-based solutions to climate change – a vast natural carbon sink as well as a habitat for untold numbers of important plant and animal species? Are you aware that many mainstream and traditional medicines are derived from plants and animals living in the rainforests?

Now, closer to home…do you live in a new house, where a natural habitat for wildlife was destroyed and all the animals and plant life displaced? Did the giant superstore where you shop and its acres of blacktop parking lot take away the natural habitat of birds, rabbits, chipmunks, raccoons, foxes, deer and any number of other species who made their home there?

Pollinator loss from habitat destruction is particularly worrisome. Take bees, for example. When we destroy their fields of wildflowers and other native vegetation with bulldozers clearing the way for a new shopping center or corporate headquarters, or contaminate their habitats with pesticides and wireless radiation that may interfere with their navigation abilities, we upset the balance that helps put fruits and vegetables in the bins at Stop & Shop.

Fewer pollinators, fewer food choices, increasing food prices. And isn’t it becoming clearer every day that humans need to increase these very foods in their diets to ensure a healthy life?

Climate change is also playing an increasingly important role in our biodiversity crisis. Spring comes earlier, along with warmer temperatures that force flowers to bloom before the pollinators arrive.

In the case of some insects which feed only on specific plants, the blooms may die before the insects arrive, causing hunger and resulting in fewer plants being pollinated. More than 70 species of pollinators are listed as endangered or threatened.

Other climate change effects include erratic precipitation patterns, which some but not all insects and animals can adapt to. It may also provide new opportunities for invasive species which may outcompete native species for food and habitat, further stressing natives to survive. Higher temperatures have forced animals and plants to leave their natural habitats and move to higher elevations with dire consequences for ecosystems. The risk of species extinction increases with every degree of our warming planet.

Overexploitation by overfishing and harvesting of game animals and other organisms beyond the capacity for surviving populations to reproduce has driven the number of endangered species to a tipping point, and with it the fear that many species may soon become extinct. Driven by money and demand and, in some instances, just the thrill of the kill, humans are 100% responsible for this unnecessary loss of biodiversity.

Finally, pollution. As we pollute our planet with toxic substances, radiation and other forms of energy, we are creating biodiversity loss in all life forms, including humans. In some cases exposures may occur in doses that kill outright, but more often they just create serious health problems, such as cancers, neurological harm, endocrine disruption, DNA damage, reproductive and birth defects that threaten even our own survival.

Our natural world is an infinitely complex interdependent system of interlocking parts that makes the international space station look like a child’s toy. And it’s the interdependent part that we consistently fail to recognize as we continue down the path of human domination.

The takeaway: Biodiversity is a circular system that provides us with clean air, fresh water, and good quality soil to grow our food. Living organisms are constantly interacting in dynamic ecosystems, so the loss of one species can have far-reaching impacts.

Novelist Wendell Berry is one of my favorite thinkers and he writes, “What we call nature is, in a sense, the sum of the changes made by all the various creatures and natural forces in their intricate actions and influences upon each other and upon their places. Because of woodpeckers, nature is different from what it would be without them. It is different also because of the borers and ants that live in tree trunks, and because of bacteria that live in the soil under the trees. The making of these differences is the making of the world.”