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

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I don’t think we preserve an animal from the brink of extinction. We might preserve its habitat but what does that even mean?

We conserve things that are rare by trying to keep them in good condition … like a museum artefact. Wildlife conservation best describes efforts to maintain a species from going extinct. We might ‘conserve’ an animal in a zoo, in the hope that it doesn’t disappear altogether – though many of those benefits are doubtful, except in the most carefully selected examples of captive-breeding. Conservation is also of places All of your belief systems inside a bubble mean nothing until they are challenged. All of these people who uphold science, your hypothesis means nothing until it’s actually put to the test and the only way of putting it to the test is interacting with people.’ – Desiree Burch, 2021. Tiny Revolutions Podcast. Fifty per cent of the echidna brain is used for some of the hardest kinds of thinking. In humans, it’s not even thirty per cent.’ – Tyson Yunkaporta, 2019. Sand Talk.

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Reading this book may change your mind about almost everything”. Dame Johanna Lumley The Importance of Wildlife in Rebalancing Our Planet A plant doesn’t need a brain contained inside its body because it doesn’t have to be. The brain is instead connected to other plants via the soil. 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.

A good climate describes favourable conditions for survival. Unstable or rapidly changing climate is a problem for ancient trees and humans alike. Because the intelligence – and therefore survival – of trees (indeed all life forms), as Wohlleben explains, is based on them knowing the climate.

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 From a humanity perspective therefore, we are part of the system that allows ancient trees to exist. But that’s also the system that allows us to exist … alongside other animals. We animals are part and parcel of ecosystems. Ancient trees are one of the stable characteristics of an ecosystem that can support humanity. They are not the reason we exist but a function (Of an ecosystem). A subset of ecosystem processes and structures, where the ecosystem does something that provides an ecosystem service of value to people. of how we exist.