We’re in a Biodiversity crisis

Season 3, episode 9

Let's get into it...

Summary:

Joe did a masters in conservation, and for it he went to the Congo basin, where there is this massive ecosystem called the Peatlands.

It stores 30 billion tons of carbon in that one area, it’s the equivalent of 3 years of greenhouse gas emissions and it’s untapped and hugely important in the ecosystem.

Joe was there to study birds there, looking at what birds were there and how they are affected by locals there. What he found was that when locals were doing small scale logging and thatching etc didn’t have a big impact on biodiversity as it was done in a small, unindustrialised way.

Conclusion: local tribes and villages aren’t the issue, it is more the big companies doing mass deforestation and mining.

A lot of the birds were identified by sound not sight because the vegetation was so dense, because it’s such an uninterrupted ecosystem

Each species play different roles and help balance and keep our different ecosystems alive. Without them and as we loose more it is going to change our environment around us as we know it.

Joe also spent 3 months in South Africa studying big cats. They are top of the food chain and regulate the food chain below. So for instance on a game reserve if you don’t have enough carnivores, the herbivores actually would increase in size too much and the grasslands wouldn’t be able to keep up with the amount of grazing taking place. The food chain is a delicate balance and carnivores are needed to keep it all in balance.

There are only 22,000 lions left in the wild - this is due to habitat loss :(

Trophy hunting has always been seen as a negative but it’s is in fact legal and recent research has shown that it helps conservation. This is because hunting grounds are protected area and if they weren’t allowed they would end up being farms etc which would have more of an impact on the animals.

3 things we learnt:

Joe says “Conservation is all about the connection between people, places and wildlife and the protection of those things. We often treat them separately but it’s bringing them together to protect each one is conservation”

there are 8million species that we have never seen before or identified

Rhino horns are often poached illegally and sold on the black market and they leave the rhinos to bleed out and dye. A lot of game rangers will protect them by taking their horns off to protect them from poachers and keep them alive. But there is a debate to legalise selling rhino horns to undercut the poaching and hopefully save more of them from bleeding out.

Challenge:

Don’t rely on TikTok, read an actual article on conservation on the hot topic of trophy hunting.