As I’ve reported several times before, claims of a so-called “Sixth Mass Extinction” are not just exaggerated, but almost entirely fact-free. Their central claims — that X number of species are going extinct, and that this is Y times the “background rate” — are at best highly conjectural, at worst, deliberately deceitful. According to Australian ecologist Nigel Stork, “There is essentially no empirical data to support estimates of one hundred extinctions per day, or even one”.
Nonetheless, the idea of a “Sixth Mass Extinction” is as firmly fixed in the minds of the green left as “catastrophic climate change”. Part of this is due to the media’s obsession with hysterically amplifying alarmist claims, no matter how ill-founded.
A great deal of it is also due to the green movement’s intransigent misanthropy.
I’ve written before of the basic contradictions of the environmental movement when it comes to humans, but this idea that humans and the environment are mutually exclusive blinds the green movement to the simple fact that humans are often hugely beneficial to other species. As world-leading biodiversity researcher Stuart Pimm points out, the greatest biodiversity does not and has never existed in the areas humans exploit the most. So, while it is true that land given over to intensive agriculture is the most devastating to biodiversity… so what?
For one thing, the much-maligned industrial agriculture means that far less land is needed today to produce more food than ever. But most humans do not live in intensively-farmed areas. The bulk of humanity today — and growing — lives in towns and cities.
And if you think that towns and cities are wastelands for wildlife, think again.
In many of the world’s major cities, one can spot animals such as raccoons, wildcats, bears, pumas, sea lions, beavers, owls, and eagles. I myself live in Stockholm and can testify to how deer, hares, and even foxes roam the suburbs as if they have never lived anywhere else. Occasionally, a roe deer or moose appears on a street. Above, sea eagles soar and ravens croak.
In cities, there are gardens, parks, plenty of food, and often a lot of open water, and no one is hunting – except for the predators who have also sought out streets and squares because their prey has done so.
In my rural Tasmanian town, threatened eastern barred bandicoots scurry everywhere on the streets at night. Only ten minutes ago, I poked my head out my library door and startled one of our regular “bandy” visitors — for whom I deliberately planted the garden with food and shelter plants. Our garden abounds in lizards. Kingfishers and pademelons have been known to visit. There’s a possum box in one of the trees. Raucous flocks of cockatoos and galahs regularly squawk at the nearby footy oval, where plovers are a bane of the Auskick kids.
In Australia, a few years ago, researchers identified 39 endangered species that only live in limited urban habitats, including trees, shrubs, a turtle, and a snail. One study found that of 529 surveyed bird species, 66 were found only in cities. Another study showed that cities can act as a refuge for bees. The coyote has successfully adapted to urban life in the United States. The canine has become excellent at avoiding humans while hunting squirrels and rats in green areas.
Urban species gradually change their behaviors. It is evolution in real-time.
Of course, this doesn’t mean that all species thrive in cities. Many do not. But the one constant in nature is change. Where some species cannot survive, others will happily carve out their niches.
More importantly, cities and towns are increasingly being planned with wild species in mind. Even the much-debated cat and dog curfews are attempts to allow wild species to live in human spaces relatively unmolested. Which speaks to another truth the green misanthropists ignore: modern humans are infinitely more committed to and better at caring for the environment than our forebears.
The arrival of humans in new continents like the Americas and Australasia thousands and hundreds of years ago invariably coincided with large extinction events.
As people settled on islands in the Pacific Ocean between 3,500 and a few hundred years ago, enormous numbers of bird species disappeared, possibly as many as 2,000. Species on isolated islands are at a much higher risk of extinction than those on the mainland.
Another astonishing case is the passenger pigeon. In the early 1800s, there were several billion of these birds in North America. The last passenger pigeon died in a zoo in Cincinnati in 1914 after more than a century of horrific hunting pressure.
Around the same time, unrestrained bison hunting took place on the same continent.
But the bison were saved from extinction in the nick of time. From just four hundred at the turn of the last century, bison numbers have increased to near half a million. Just a few decades later, the great whale species were similarly rescued from the brink. While some hunting continues, populations of even blue whales are fast recovering. It’s a slow process, only just begun, but it’s heading in the right direction.
The nature conservation efforts of recent decades show that when humans understand that they are destroying and therefore retreat, nature can recover quickly and strongly. North America and Europe are the best examples so far. Today, there are more mammals in Europe than in the past 8,000 years.
According to an American study, 291 species would have disappeared from the US since 1973 if it were not for the conservation laws that were put in place at that time. The same legislation has allowed 39 species to fully recover on American soil during the same period.
An entirely unintentional but very clear case is the exclusion zone around Chernobyl, a 2,800 square kilometer area, which after nearly 40 years without human interference has become a haven for lynx, European bison, deer, rodents, and various birds. The zone is now a natural experiment to test nature’s ability to recover.
Now it is time for Asia, Africa, and South America to succeed as well or better in protecting animals and plants. There are already many good examples. A few include: the tiger, snow leopard, oryx, Yangtze dolphin, panda, black rhino, greater one-horned rhino, mountain gorilla, golden monkey, and Christmas Island’s red crab.
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As Bjorn Lomborg wrote in The Skeptical Environmentalist, the environmental situation today is far from perfect. But it’s far, far better than too many people would have you believe. And it’s getting better all the time.
And there is no “Sixth Mass Extinction”.