Podcast: Humanity’s extermination of species will boomerang on it

You all must have seen the Grand Canyon in the United States on the internet, television or in print. That famous shot of the Colorado windings through red rocky outcrops. If you follow the dying river a few thousand miles further, it reaches the Sea of Cortez, also called the Gulf of California. That is where you should have come across a little porpoise called the vaquita. But you won’t because there are only 10 vaquitas left in the world.

Let me tell you about how we humans are emptying our planet of non-humans. Scientists have a name for this phenomenon: The Sixth Mass Extinction.

Our planet is 4.5 billion years old and the only one in our universe to have life. Life forms have come and gone from Earth. Remember the dinosaurs? Nature has its own way of taking out life.

So how is the Sixth Mass Extinction different, you ask? Unlike previous extinction events caused by natural phenomena, this time, it is we humans who are leading the charge. We have burnt fossil fuels, cleared forests, farmed livestock, taken animals and plants to areas where they were not native, hunted and poached. In short, we have made a mess of our home. It is, as Paul Crutzen termed it, the Anthropcene, a geological epoch driven by Anthropos, Greek for ‘Man’ or ‘Human’. The Anthropocene, while still being debated by scientists — we will leave that for another time — is undoubtedly causing the Sixth Mass Extinction.

Let me take just a small timeframe. Let us start in the year of our Lord Anno Domini 1500. Just 8 years ago, the Genoese sailor Christopher Columbus, in the service of Spain, has reached the Americas. It is a landmark moment. The Age of Discovery — I am loathe to use discovery but since that is what is used so there — that begins will also bring about the Age of Colonialism and Empire. With terrible consequences for humans and non-humans alike.

A study in the PNAS journal late last year found that between 1500 and 2022 AD, 73 genera (plural of genus) of vertebrates (excluding fish) went extinct.

Genera is the plural of ‘genus’ as per the taxonomic system designed by the Swede Carl Linnaeus. Scientifically, humans are Homo sapiens, where ‘Homo’ is the genus. So there.

Birds, the researchers found, suffered the heaviest losses with 44 genus extinctions. Think of the dodo, the poster bird (pun intended) of extinction. Birds were followed by mammals (21 genus extinctions), amphibians (five extinctions) and reptiles (three extinctions).

In the last 50 years, humans fuelled a surge of genus extinctions, which otherwise would have taken 18,000 years to occur. Even worse, the researchers admitted that without us, the Earth would have lost just two genera between 1500 and 2022. Take that.

We are hastening the end of other species in various ways, which I referred to earlier. Let me come back to that now and give a few more details.

Let me start with invasive species. As I mentioned earlier, humans have taken animals and plants to areas where they were not native. This was a phenomenon that accelerated during the ages of discovery and colonisation.

Take the dodo which I just mentioned. This flightless bird from the pigeon family used to be found only on the Indian Ocean island of Mauritius.

In the last 500 years, 4 European powers colonised Mauritius, which was hitherto uninhabited by humans. People brought livestock as well as pet dogs and cats. The dodo, never used to such animals, could not save itself from them as well as those who brought them. These predators also ate dodo eggs, which meant that no new dodos came into the world. And slowly, the dodo vanished from Earth.

The dogs and cats are what are known as invasive species. They are new to a place where they are taken. But they soon reach the top of the food chain and finish off native wildlife.

In September 2023, the Intergovernmental Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES), an independent body comprising more than 140 member-states, released an assessment on invasive alien species and their impacts on the planet’s people and biodiversity.

The results were grim. Invasive species have caused 60 per cent of recorded global extinctions. Ninety per cent of these have been on islands (Hello Mauritius!).

There is more. Human activities have translocated some 37,000 alien species planet-wide; 3,500 of these have been found to have negative impacts in their new environments. And most of the economic losses caused by such species of animals and plants — yes, plants too — are borne by poor and marginalised humans.

Now let me turn my attention to species who migrate. Obviously, animals or plants do not know human borders. A line on the map or a border fence or territorial waters may not make sense to non-humans. But they do suffer on account of these.

The State of the World’s Migratory Species brought out by the Convention on the Conservation of Migratory Species (CMS) of Wild Animals this February revealed some shocking facts regarding this.

The evidence presented by researchers showed that a significant proportion — 44 per cent (520 species) — of CMS-listed species are undergoing population declines. One in five CMS species face risks of extinction.

Terrestrial and aquatic mammals, reptiles, fish, birds and insects. All are at risk. You may have seen or heard documentaries showing Blue Wildebeest and Plains Zebra make the Great Migration every year in East Africa. Well, they are at risk from settlements, roads and fences. Next time you plan a trip to the Serengeti or Maasai Mara, do remember.

Or what would happen if you are mistaken for someone else and killed? That is what is happening to the vaquita, with which I started this podcast. The CMS report lists bycatch as one of the overexploitation factors. The fishers who catch the vaquita, do not intend to do so. They want to catch the totoaba, a fish whose swim bladder is used in Traditional Chinese medicine. But their gillnets also trap the vaquita. How unfair is that!

Ultimately, we must realise that our taking out species from this planet will in the end hurt us. For every species is a part of the food chain. If one species goes, the entire chain will collapse or at least be disturbed. Nature is the best designer. Not us. We must accept that with humility. Else disaster awaits us too.

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