How my birth in 1970 marked the beginning of the end of the natural world
It isn’t just my own decline and demise that I’m concerned with, often consumed with, sometimes depressed with, it’s also the stark reality of the declining natural world around me.
I’m continually reading that Britain is the most naturally depleted, biodiverse starved, of any European/world nation.
Although this decline of the natural world started long, long ago, the year 1970 is regularly referred to as a critical year in the rapidity of this decline. Being the year I was born - which generally speaking is a very insignificant event on the global stage - it resonates, depresses and somehow seems to be my fault.
My 13-year-old son, growing up in a world with headlines dominated by global warming, catastrophic weather events, mass extinctions, says: “Dad, this is all your fault and my generation are going to have to sort it out!” He might have a point.
The World Wildlife Fund have not helped my defence. Its Living Planet Report 2022 - a comprehensive study on global biodiversity and the health of our planet - declared that global wildlife populations have declined by 69% since 1970.
Yes. 1970. And that headline was picked up by every media organisation in the world and is continually used to warn us all of the catastrophic loss of wildlife on this little blue planet.
The WWF study found that out of the nearly 32,000 populations analyzed, there was an average decline of 69% since 1970. Up to 2.5% of mammals, fish, reptiles, birds and amphibians have already gone extinct, the report says.
A more stark and startlingly way to put this is as such: Humanity has wiped out 60% of mammals, birds, fish and reptiles since 1970, leading the world's foremost experts to warn that the annihilation of wildlife is now an emergency that threatens civilisation.
A cursory glance of my usual newspapers, magazines and periodicals in the last few weeks only add to the realisation that for all our rhetoric on protecting the environment, it’s all decline.
‘Woodland birds are in steep decline’ - The article in Nature tells me that almost all British birds are in decline - with woodland species among the worst affected. Their numbers are down 15% in the past five years alone, and get this, since 1970 they have dropped 37%. And farmland birds, since, yes you guessed it, 1970, are down 60%.
Why is this happening? The usual list - decline in woodland management; loss of hedgerows to make way for housing, farming and other developments. I know, we need more houses, and a growing population will need more farmland - but we need to work this out.
The only reports that seem to exist on anything in the natural world actually increasing in population are invasive species.
Take the Asian hornet - or the ‘invasion’ of the Asian hornet as The Week published. Nicknamed the ‘murder hornet’ it is now spreading from its native Southeast Asia to the rest of the world and Europe.
A fearsome predator, particularly to honeybees, wasps and flies and thought to have first appeared in the UK in 2004 in a container of pottery, it strips its prey of their wings, legs and heads, before delivering the protein-rich thoraxes back to the nest to feed their larvae. A single one can devour up to 50 bees in just one day.
Globalisation hasn’t helped. According to the UN-backed Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services, at least 37,000 alien species, from rabbits to jellyfish, to kudzu vines, have been introduced to different regions and biomes around the world by human trade and travel.
These invasive species are directly linked to around 60% of global and plant extinctions; they pose a threat to nature, food security and global health, and carry an estimated cost go over $400bn a year.
Our little island nation is far from removed from the invasive species issue. An estimated 3,000 invasive species are now here tearing their way through our defenceless flora and fauna - from the well-known examples such as grey squirrel, muntjac deer, American bullfrog and signal crayfish, Japanese knotweed, and even the seemingly benign rhododendrons, introduced in 1763, they carry disease and block out light reducing biodiversity for the little English natives underneath their vast canopies. And don’t forget Hymenoscyphus fraxineus - a nasty invasive fungus that now threatens 95% of all European ash trees.
It’s all decline.
Take our harvest mice and field voles. “Disappearing before our eyes” say the authors of new report from the University of Sussex. Small, furry, and rarely seen they play a critical role as ‘ecosystem engineers’. The university’s State of Nature report paints a bleak picture, finding that one in six species are at risk of extinction - ranging from millepedes and butterflies to bats and eels.
And the reason for this cataclysmic decline? Farming, fishing, industry and climate change.
Even species in the coldest places like the Emporer penguin are suffering. Due to rising temperatures and the rapid loss of sea ice entire penguin colonies of chicks perished. Sea ice in Antartica began to break up in October and by February 2023 it had reached its lowest level ever.
The fluffy checks need the sea ice to stay out of the water until they develop waterproof feathers. If it melts, they fall into the sea and die. A report last year found that more than 9,000 chicks died due to rapid sea ice loss.
Is it all bad news? Not entirely. I tried to find some positives and there are a few. Peatland is being restored in the north of Scotland; the emperor dragonfly has expanded its range by more than 50% in recent years, and fishing bans have allowed the flapper skate to make comeback after almost disappearing in the 1980s.
So, if we transform economies, industries; begin a new education revolution that is based on sustainability and biodiversity - we might have a chance.
But whatever we do, consider this. In about 250million years from now our planet will be unliveable anyway, especially for any mammals left. By then all the continents will have drifted back together again to form one super-continent, Pangea Ultima. This colossal merger will spark mass volcanic activity, CO2 levels will rise, the sun will be hotter and temperatures will top 60 degrees across the desert landscape. It will take place faster than mammals can evolve to adapt - and that will be that.
But we can still have fun and enjoy this moment on our ‘pale blue dot’ floating in an infinite cosmic arena.
Remind yourself of what Carl Sagan wrote: “The Earth is the only world known so far to harbor life. There is nowhere else, at least in the near future, to which our species could migrate. Visit, yes. Settle, not yet. Like it or not, for the moment the Earth is where we make our stand.”
If, like me, you were born in 1970, try to forgive yourself - it’s not all our fault but we certainly have not helped. Plant trees and wildflowers, change or get rid of your cars, use your bike, tell your friends, pressurise your company to be greener, fly less, eat less, grow more and if you can, try to go easy, tread lightly and stay free.