How important is global biodiversity and the interactions and interdependencies of all life for the well-being of people, animals and the environment? Do these interdependencies among all life forms lead to the logical conclusion that “biodiversity” is important (or even essential) to understand and protect?...
Around 20-25,000 years ago, the earth was in the grip of an Ice Age. The sea level was around 400 foot lower than it is today, global rainfall was lower and approximately a quarter of the earth’s surface was covered in ice. The earth then...
Every now and again, a publication or report comes along that changes how we think about life. In the animal space, Ruth Harrison’s Animal Machines (1964) was such a publication. In the environmental space, Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring (1962) and the Club of Rome’s Limits...
This past month, the United Nations Environment Program (UNEP) issued a 168-page publication entitled Making Peace with Nature. The UN Secretary-General, Antonio Guterres, comments in a Foreword that “Humanity is waging war on nature” and “Making peace with nature is the defining task of the...
In an earlier ‘Letter from the President’ in WellBeing News (October 2020), we mentioned that the Food & Agriculture Organization of the United Nations’ (FAO) has predicted that the production of animal products would have to double to meet global demand in 2050. This prediction...
A relatively recent saying, attributed to many different people, is that “prediction is very difficult, especially if it’s about the future.” In contrast, Peter Drucker, the global management guru, is quoted as saying that “the best way to predict the future is to create it.” ...
An earlier issue of WellBeing News explored the shifting historical baselines phenomenon. This phenomenon illustrates the tendency of ecologists to use recent wildlife population numbers as the baseline for their studies, even though the recent wildlife population may be much lower than the population 50...
The UN World Tourism Agency published a report in 2015 on the importance of wildlife tourism to national economies in Africa. About half of global wildlife tourism involves a visit to an African country, resulting in 6 million tourists a year visiting Sub-Saharan Africa (about...
The total global catch of wild fish increased from 31 million metric tons in 1950 to a high of 130 million metric tons in 1996 before falling back to 109 million metric tons in 2010. However, from 1950 onwards, 366 of 1,519 fisheries collapsed (defined...
The Center for Large Landscape Conservation (CLLC) is working to mainstream connectivity conservation solutions around the world that save biodiversity, increase resilience to climate change, and safeguard human health. To this end, CLLC supports the new IUCN Guidelines and the operations of the Connectivity Conservation...
