Mountain Lions and Rats and Bears Oh My: We’re Running Out of Room for Animals
RIP P-22, the iconic mountain lion who made his home in Los Angeles’s Griffith Park. He was euthanized on December 17th. New York City hired Ernie Schicchi to be the city’s ‘Rat Czar’ on December 9th. New Jersey allowed a bear hunt in December because of “overpopulation”. These are just three examples that point to the conclusion that the proliferation of humans is squeezing wildlife into ever smaller tracks of land.
People clear forests and other wild spaces to make room for more housing, infrastructure, and businesses to accommodate an explosive growth of humans. In 1980, the global population was 4.45 billion people. In 2022, we have 8 billion people. In 2050, it’s predicted to be 9.8 billion. That is a massive 120% increase from the time I was born to the time I retire.
Couple this population explosion with the fact that climate change is reducing the habitable space for all species, including humans. Human-wildlife interactions are increasing, often to the detriment of wildlife as was the case with P-22. The California Department of Fish and Wildlife describes the disease, injury, and death of P-22 this way: “an eventuality that arises from habitat loss and fragmentation, and it underscores the need for thoughtful construction of wildlife crossings and well-planned spaces that provide wild animals room to roam.” In short, people have built a world for humans without consideration for the millions of species who have been here far longer than us.
Right now, representatives from 196 countries (nearly every country in the world including Ukraine) are gathered in Montreal for COP15, the UN Biodiversity Conference. All of these countries have ratified or accepted the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD), a 1992 international agreement on how nations should use and protect the world’s natural resources. Sadly, despite its enormous size, influence, and wealth, the U.S. is one of the four countries who have not accepted the CBD and is therefore not part of the conference. (The other three countries are Andorra, South Sudan, and the Holy See (the Vatican).) With half of global GDP dependent upon nature and the pressures nature faces from climate change and human population growth, the work of COP15 to protect nature and wildlife is more urgent than ever.
25% of all plant and animal species we know of (about one million) face extinction within decades, mostly driven by human actions. Imagine how boring and bland this world will be if humans continue to destroy habitat and the millions of plants and animals who call that habitat home. When people build homes, businesses, and infrastructure, they must consider how to make room not just for more humans but also for plants and animals.
People cannot live without nature. We cannot build our way toward health, safety, and security alone. Construction plans have to consider how to not build and how to return more of this planet to nature so non-humans can also survive and thrive. The unfortunate paradigm of humans versus nature sets up a competition when in reality it is a collaboration. By fighting nature today, we compromise our fate and future. We need a win-win mindset, and solutions that imagine how all species live together today and long into the future.