Wildlife in the Balance: Why animals are humanity's best hope

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Spider crab conservation will only come from building support from within communities. While it may seem like a good idea to restrict public access, this never works. We know this because the only successful conservation in the world comes from allowing communities to lead. We exist because the animals we share the planet with existed, breathed, ate, defecated, bred, and ultimately built the ecosystems we rely on for food, climate control, drinkable water, and reliable weather. Amidst the growing awareness of the need to cease burning fossil fuels and protect and restore natural ecosystems, it is crucial to recognize the pivotal role played by the wildlife inhabiting these habitats. The slaughter of crabs initially led local councils to vote for a ban on crab fishing. This is the very type of community-led outcome that could result in stable conservation outcomes. But for reasons explained above, centralisation of conservation control through universities and government bodies is par-for-the-course in many western countries. Community disempowerment soon takes over. That never ends well.

How abundant did sun bears use to be? Population estimates aren’t necessary to understand importance. Augeri (2005) [2] states: ‘It should be noted that the reality of population estimates is that they are approximations and the reality of animal distributions is that they are patchy. Very few species or taxa, if any, occupy 100% of their range and have perfectly uniform distributions.’ Could easily be considered as the most important book to have been created in the world of environment and ecological science.” Wildlife conservation is the practice of protecting plant and animal species and their habitats. As part of the world’s ecosystems, wildlife provides balance and stability to nature’s processes. The goal of wildlifeconservation is to ensure the survival of these species, and to educate people on living sustainably with other species. mya life reforms in its new design of hairy mammals and feathered dinosaurs (birds). It takes about 25 million years, for ecosystems to reach full capacity again.Some scientists will tell you that knowing the age of spider crabs helps us create models for fisheries. But if you’re staring in the eye of an animal that’s older than you, it begs another question. Can our fisheries exist without them? Should we even be catching them at all? These are key questions for spider crab conservation. This is also the wonder of nature that we need to inspire people to protect them. Science has a role but will never have all the answers The area shown above, including extinct areas, is about 3,750,000 km 2. There is now about 650,000 km 2 remaining. So I could argue with Wohlleben’s book subtitle for The Power of Trees. It’s not so much ‘how ancient forests can save us’ as ‘how wildlife can support ancient forests and save humanity.’ Every single human is wild born. It’s impossible to remove that mark. Wild living is not about returning to forager status. It’s about relationships with what is wild, about knowing a small part of wild nature and letting it live inside the soul.’ – Craig Foster, 2021. Underwater Wild If ancient trees die that’s a symptom of an ecosystem that has collapsed to a point that it’s not longer habitable. To maintain continuity of our own survival requires a new way of thinking about ancient trees as much as it does about humans. Ancient trees also depend on wildlife in the balance.

Trees are able to store their intelligence for a thousand years. Animals can’t do that. Our ‘culture’ is passed on through stories, song, dance and shared experience. Compared to ancient trees our wisdom is ephemeral. Being an animal is quite a lonely existence, living inside one’s own mind. But ancient trees are physically connected to others all of the time. According to Augeri [2], the greatest deforestation impacts are in Malaysia and Indonesia. In these two countries, as much as 85% of logging is primary rainforest. This core sun bear habitat could have densities varying from 0.0234 – 0.0416 bears/km 2. Even at the most conservative estimate, this should mean about 15,000 bears. But current population estimates are more like 1,000 bears. Some of this reduction can be explained by natural variation but a lot will be disturbance and habitat fragmentation. Migrants may uniquely alter energy flow, food-web topology and stability, trophic cascades, and the structure and dynamics of (meta-)communities. For example, the inputs of nutrients and energy originating from distant localities by migrants can dramatically increase resource availability, with rippling consequences for productivity at various trophic levels.’ – Bauer and Hoye, 2014. Migratory Animals Couple Biodiversity and Ecosystem Functioning Worldwide these old warrior oak grow in a park where large herds of mouflon sheep and fallow deer deposit copious quantities of droppings on the ground. This leads to overfertilisation with nitrogen, something trees do not enjoy at all.’ Peter Wohlleben, The Power of Trees, (2023)The historical distribution of sun bears was nonetheless over a massive area of southeast Asia. The core areas of primary rainforest (where bears’ occur at highest density [2]) were all occupied at one time. Sun bear (Helarctos malayanus) distribution map, altered from the IUCN Red List (of endangered species). A list of current conservation status for all the world’s known species. The list is administered by the International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN) and the data is fed into by national and international organisations to be continuously updated. map (Scotson et al. 2017). The colours represent the confrmed present (green) and probable present (blue) distribution ranges, as well as the areas where the sun bear is assumed to have gone extinct (red). From Kunde et al (2019) [3]

Ian Redmond OBE describes this as ‘perhaps the most important book of our time’, prefacing this important conservation book with: But protecting animals is a simple, achievable and rewarding objective we can all get behind to secure our fragile existence on Earth. Conservation can solve most of the world's problems. these enormous plants are just like people: there are huge variations between individuals, and they don’t all learn at the same speed or draw the right conclusions from their life experience.’ Peter Wohlleben, The Power of Trees, (2023) Trees power and thousand year-old brains Everyone from shareholders to work forces and their families, who depend on the forest soil for anything, be it hunting or logging, needs to understand this. Bears created the conditions that made it possible for humanity to succeed. Without bears in future, humanity will fail. The human population has grown exponentially over the past 200 years, to more than seven billion people today, and it continues to rapidly grow. This means natural resources are being consumed faster than ever by the billions of people on the planet. This growth and development also endangers the habitats and existence of various types of wildlife around the world, particularly animals and plants that may be displaced for land development, or used for food or other human purposes. Other threats to wildlife include the introduction of invasive species from other parts of the world, climate change, pollution, hunting, fishing, and poaching.

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We don’t know. One of the objectives of research by Deakin University students is to try to work out whether the crabs stay in the bay or disperse beyond it. For instance, they are placing acoustic tags on crabs that emit a regular ‘ping’. The bay’s entrance has a curtain of listening stations placed to hear if any cross the line. mya The first dinosaurs appear. The warm, oxygen-rich climate suits them so well, they spread out among the adjoined continents. Large animals dominate Earth’s ecosystems for another 165 million years . A hundred million years ago In the book Wilding Isabella Tree refers to this conundrum and has found that restoring shrubby woodland reduces the harm caused. It gives the trees a head start, while also providing the habitat needed for lots of other animals to persist in the intermediate grassland. If we’re going to preserve wildlife we have to be prepared to think a different way about animals and our connection to them. The mystery (what we don’t know) is more important than what we do. We desperately need to engage people in this wonder – not through TV series but in real life. We don’t need to know exactly how much impact a sun bear has. We have enough knowledge already to understand the magnitude, scale and intensity i.e. importance, of sun bears.

Humans live in a world of excess. If we are hungry, we can buy more food than we need to eat (and grow fat and unhealthy). For a bear, this would be a death-sentence. Here is another ecological paradox. Survival often means to struggle, cooperate and compromise, not to excel at the expense of everything else. This fragility makes bears both vulnerable and powerful in equal measure. And this makes sense when you realise they are part of the ecosystem. Bears are a slave to it, and the reason it exists at all. As we enter a new phase of human existence, one of self-preservation, saving animals is the only thing that will work, because only animals can rebuild the complex life-supporting ecosystems we need. To restore humanity and create a new path for human survival means giving animals room to recolonise and sharing our planet with them.

Animal cultures are made through language and behaviour. We are disconnected from the Earth. There is an air-gap between each of us. This is why we can go a long time before we notice that a neighbour has a problem. Plants and animals originate from two different bacterial origins. While plants can generally exist without us, the diversification processes needed to maintain ancient trees, fail without animals. The ancient trees we covet are a symbol of healthy ‘modern’ ecosystems.