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<text id=89TT0041>
<title>
Jan. 02, 1989: Biodiversity:The Death Of Birth
</title>
<history>
TIME--The Weekly Newsmagazine--1989
Jan. 02, 1989 Planet Of The Year:Endangered Earth
</history>
<article>
<source>Time Magazine</source>
<hdr>
PLANET OF THE YEAR, Page 32
BIODIVERSITY - The Death of Birth
</hdr><body>
<p>THE PROBLEM: Man is recklessly wiping out life on earth
</p>
<p>By Eugene Linden
</p>
<p> Before Brazil's great land rush, the emerald rain forests of
Rondonia state were an unspoiled showcase for the diversity of
life. In this lush territory south of the Amazon, there was
hardly a break in the canopy of 200-ft.-tall trees, and
virtually every acre was alive with the cacophony of all kinds
of insects, birds and monkeys. Then, beginning in the 1970s,
came the swarms of settlers, slashing and burning huge swaths
through the forest to create roads, towns and fields. They came
to enjoy a promised land, but they have merely produced a
network of devastation. The soil that supported a rich rain
forest is not well suited to corn and other crops, and most of
the newcomers can eke out only an impoverished, disease-ridden
existence. In the process, they are destroying an ecosystem and
the millions of species of plants and animals that live in it.
An estimated 20% of Rondonia's forest is gone, and at present
rates of destruction it will be totally wiped out within 25
years.
</p>
<p> Around the globe, on land and in the sea, the story is much
the same. Spurred by poverty, population growth, ill-advised
policies and simple greed, humanity is at war with the plants
and animals that share its planet. Peter Raven, director of the
Missouri Botanical Garden, predicts that during the next three
decades man will drive an average of 100 species to extinction
every day. Extinction is part of evolution, but the present rate
is at least 1,000 times the pace that has prevailed since
prehistory.
</p>
<p> Even the mass extinctions 65 million years ago that killed
off the dinosaurs and countless other species did not
significantly affect flowering plants, according to Harvard
biologist E.O. Wilson. But these plant species are disappearing
now, and people, not comets or volcanoes, are the angels of
destruction. Moreover, the earth is suffering the decline of
entire ecosystems -- the nurseries of new life-forms. For that
reason, Wilson deems this crisis the "death of birth." British
ecologist Norman Myers has called it the "greatest single
setback to life's abundance and diversity since the first
flickerings of life almost 4 billion years ago."
</p>
<p> Nearly every habitat is at risk. Forests in the northern
hemisphere have fallen to lumbering, development and acid rain.
Marine ecosystems around the world are threatened by pollution,
overfishing and coastal development. It is in the tropics,
though, that the battle to preserve what scientists call
biodiversity will be won or lost. Tropical forests cover only 7%
of the earth's surface, but they house between 50% and 80% of
the planet's species.
</p>
<p> But should people in developed countries care about the
survival of tropical species never seen outside a rain forest?
Yes, they should. Variety is the spice of life, goes the saying.
Biologists would go further and argue that variety is the very
stuff of life. Life needs diversity because of the
interdependencies that link flora and fauna, and because
variation within species allows them to adapt to environmental
challenges. But even as the world's human population explodes,
other life is ebbing from the planet. Humanity is making a
risky wager -- that it does not need the great variety of
earth's species to survive.
</p>
<p> Despite the alarm with which scientists view this trend,
biodiversity has just surfaced on the world's political agenda.
The troubles of high-profile animals such as the tiger and
rhino grab public attention, while most people hardly see the
point of worrying about insects or plants. But extinction is the
one environmental calamity that is irreversible. As these lowly
species disappear unnoticed, they take with them hard-won
lessons of survival encoded in their genes over millions of
years.
</p>
<p> Only 1.7 million of the estimated 5 million to 30 million
different life-forms on earth have been cataloged. Since
hundreds of thousands of species may be extinct by the year
2000, the world has neither the scientists nor the time to
identify the yet uncounted. "It's as though the nations of the
world decided to burn their libraries without bothering to see
what is in them," said University of Pennsylvania biologist
Daniel Janzen at the TIME conference. Harvard's Wilson called
this profligacy the "folly" that future generations are least
likely to forgive.
</p>
<p> Humanity already benefits greatly from the genetic heritage
of little-known species. Some 25% of the pharmaceuticals in use
in the U.S. today contain ingredients originally derived from
wild plants. Hidden anonymously in clumps of vegetation about to
be bulldozed or burned might be plants with cures for still
unconquered diseases. "I know of three plants with the potential
to treat AIDS," said Janzen. "One grows in an Australian rain
forest, one in Panama and one in Costa Rica."
</p>
<p> Nature's diversity offers many opportunities for
agriculture, especially now that genetic mapping and
engineering have given biotechnology firms the potential power
to improve crops by transferring genes from wild strains.
According to Wilson, biotechnology can transform a plant into
a "loose-leaf notebook" from which scientists can select a
particular page. Among the possible results: drought- and
frost-resistant crops, and natural fertilizers and pesticides.
</p>
<p> Diversity is the raw material of earth's wealth, but
nature's true creativity lies in the relationships that link
various creatures. The coral in a reef or the orchid in a rain
forest is part of an ecosystem, a fragile, often delicately
balanced conglomeration of supports, checks and balances that
integrate life-forms into functioning communities. Given the
complex workings of an ecosystem, it is never clear which
species, if any, are expendable.
</p>
<p> In the tropics the crucial question is how large a forest
must be to sustain itself. If a park or protected area is too
small to support some of its animal and plant life, the
ecosystem will decline even with protection. As yet, no one
knows the minimum critical size of a rain forest, but in 1979
Thomas Lovejoy, now at the Smithsonian Institution, set up a
20-year experiment with the cooperation of the Brazilian
government to determine just that for the Amazon region. Among
the findings: the smaller the forest, the faster the decline of
insects, birds and mammals.
</p>
<p> Biologists have identified numerous "hot spots" where
ecosystems are under attack and large numbers of unique species
face an immediate threat of elimination. Among the troubled
areas: Madagascar, where more than 90% of the original
vegetation has disappeared; the monsoon forests of the
Himalayan foothills that are being denuded by villagers in
search of firewood, building materials and arable land; New
Caledonia, 83% of whose plants occur nowhere else; the eastern
slope of the Andes, as well as forests in East Africa,
peninsular Malaysia, northeast Australia and along the Atlantic
coast of Brazil.
</p>
<p> Since less than 5% of the world's tropical forests receive
any protection, the stage is set for mass extinctions. Many
plants and animals are doomed, no matter what measures are
taken. Some researchers estimate that at least 12% of the bird
species in the Amazon basin, as well as 15% of the plants in
Central and South America, can be counted among what Janzen
calls the "living dead." Many tropical mammals and reptiles
face only bleak survival under what amounts to house arrest in
game parks and zoos.
</p>
<p> Why are so many species and environments threatened? The
main reason is that throughout the tropics, developing nations
are struggling to feed their peoples and raise cash to make
payments on international debts. Many countries are chopping
down their forests for the sake of timber exports. In Central
America forests are giving way to cattle ranches, which supply
beef to American fast-food chains. The pressures on forests
have led Janzen, who has spent 26 years struggling to save
Costa Rica's woodlands, to conclude that "everything outside
parks will be gone, and everything inside the parks is
threatened."
</p>
<p> Efforts to stop the destruction run into moral as well as
practical obstacles. How can developed nations demand onerous
debt payments and ask the debtors to preserve their forests?
How can countries worry about biodiversity when their people
are concerned with feeding themselves?
</p>
<p> To begin with, the rich nations must reduce the debt burden
of the poor. But just as important is a concerted campaign to
convince the people of developing countries that it is in their
own long-term interest to preserve their environments. Wiping
out forests may make developing nations momentarily richer, but
it is bound to produce a poorer future.
</p>
<p> Experience has shown the Third World that destruction of
forests can have disastrous consequences. Forests are vital
watersheds that absorb excess moisture and anchor topsoil.
Deforestation contributed to the recent droughts in Africa and
the devastating mud slides in Rio de Janeiro last year. In
Costa Rica topsoil eroded from bald hills has greatly shortened
the life of an expensive hydroelectric dam. Alvaro Umana, Costa
Rica's Minister of Industry, Energy and Mines, estimated that
the surrounding watershed might have been protected 20 years
ago for a cost of $5 million. Now the government must reforest
the watershed at ten times that price.
</p>
<p> Halting the assault on biodiversity will not be easy, but
there are many actions that governments can take. First, they
should develop and support local scientific institutions that
train professionals in conservation techniques. More money
should flow into educational programs that alert people to the
irreversible consequences of a loss of genetic diversity. An
international, environmental version of the Peace Corps could
spread conservation expertise to the Third World.
</p>
<p> Throughout the developing nations there are encouraging
stirrings of local environmental activity. In Malaysia
blowgun-armed Penan tribesmen have joined forces with
environmentalists in an effort to stop rampant logging. And in
Brazil, which has some 500 conservation organizations,
environmentalist Jose Pedro de Oliveira Costa organized a
coalition of legislators, conservationists, industrialists and
media barons to stir public support to preserve Brazil's
remaining Atlantic forests. ``The threats to the forests
remain," said Costa, "but now at least there is a network in
place to scream when a threat arises."
</p>
<p> But environmental protection must make economic sense, and
development must go hand in hand with preservation. Development
should be sustainable, meaning that it should use up resources
no faster than they can be regenerated by nature. Governments
and private firms should organize projects to show that forests
can be used without being obliterated. If trees are cut
selectively, forests can yield profits and survive to produce
more money in the future. Another way to harvest cash from
forests and other habitats is to set up tours and safaris to
attract animal lovers and photography buffs. Long a moneymaker
in Africa and the Galapagos Islands, this "ecotourism" is
spreading to such places as Costa Rica.
</p>
<p> For sustainable development to work, observed Paulo
Nogueira-Neto, environmental adviser to the Brazilian Ministry
of Culture, governments will have to devise comprehensive
national zoning plans so that their countries can achieve the
right mix of preservation and economic growth. Local residents
can be encouraged to earn a livelihood in the more robust
areas, while habitats that are fragile can be protected.
Sustainable development can proceed, noted Kenneth Piddington,
director of the environmental department of the World Bank,
"right up to a park's boundary."
</p>
<p> Financial as well as political leverage can be used in the
cause of preservation. Governments should force local lending
institutions to review the environmental consequences of
proposed loans. No bank, for example, should be allowed to lend a
company money to set up a cattle ranch if the operation would
destroy too large a section of an endangered forest.
</p>
<p> Finally, the unfortunate reality is that many habitats are
not going to be saved. To prevent the genetic legacy of those
areas from being extinguished, as many species as possible
should be preserved in zoos, botanical gardens and other "gene
banks." There, scientists can study a small percentage of
threatened organisms and have the options of later returning
them to the wild or transplanting some of their genes into
other species.
</p>
<p> But the best place to preserve the earth's biodiversity is
in the ecosystems that gave rise to it. Man must abandon the
belief that the natural order is mere stuff to be managed and
domesticated, and accept that humans, like other creatures,
depend on a web of life that must be disturbed as little as
possible.
</p>
</body></article>
</text>