This week saw the death of one of the last of his kind. Sudan, the male northern white rhino, was euthanized at the Ole Pejeeta Conservancy in Laikipia, Kenya after having a recurring infection in his leg. He was 45 years old. This leaves only 2 of his species left alive; his daughter and granddaughter. Now, you may think to yourself, okay, sad but why should this bother me?
I will say straight up that I am a nature and animal lover from way back, (I was even christened as “Mother Nature” by my grade six teacher) so I found this news quite troubling. This is not a singular event either. Everyone has heard the list of endangered animals such as polar bears, snow leopards, swift fox, burrowing owls, red wolf; the list goes on and on. There are so many other species on the verge of being lost forever. Even our very own Canadian icon, the moose, has seen its numbers dramatically decrease in the past decade and every year there seems to be less and less songbirds in the spring. I have spoken about this to people I know and often I have heard the reply, ‘Wouldn’t this have happened anyways? How can we know this has anything to do with our own species? Why should this bother me?’
Along with the loss of individual animals, there has also been an increase in mass die-offs. They are particularly on the rise in birds, marine invertebrates, and fish although it is not only in these species. In 2015, 200, 000 critically endangered saiga antelope simply dropped dead. This represented two-thirds of the entire saiga population. This event stunned and mystified biologists until they were able to conclude that die-off was caused by the normally harmless Pasteurella multocida type B bacteria. This infection was strongly linked to higher temperatures and humidity. This doesn’t bode well with the whole climate change thing; higher temperatures will make an environment for these bacteria to flourish and in turn kill off more antelope.
The saiga is just an example of a this phenomenon but there have been many more of these mass die-offs in the past several years including bee colony collapse, white-nose syndrome in bats, and many more. The reasons for these events vary but the major culprits include human-caused disturbances, biotoxins such as red tide, and disease. Many of these things can be prevented. Climate change and environmental degradation are contributors to most of these things.
We, as a planet of living creatures, are interconnected so if there is a loss in one spot, it will affect all those that live around it. These deaths can change the food chain dramatically. The loss of a species of sea urchin in the Caribbean in 1983 led the way for an algae invasion of the coral reef which smothered it. The introduction of rabbits, camels, and cane toads into Australia has permanently scarred their ecosystem and reduced the number of endemic marsupials. The world is a beautiful balancing act and it is off-kilter. We are a member of the animal kingdom and can also be affected by these events too.
In October 2017, the Alliance of World Scientists (AWS) published World Scientists’ Warning to Humanity: a second notice. In it, they submit “that in order to prevent widespread misery caused by catastrophic damage to the biosphere, humanity must practice more environmentally sustainable alternative to business-as-usual”. To date more than 20,000 scientists from every field has signed this petition in hopes that this will help bring more light to the dire situation we are facing. This was 25 years after the first notice was issued and besides the stabilization of the ozone layer, humanity has otherwise failed to make significant change. The rapid decline in ozone depleting substances has shown that we can make a difference; now we need to face these other changes head on.
It is not all doom-and-gloom. There have been small improvements. Last year was the first year in nearly a century where tiger populations increased, the manatee and the panda were removed from the endangered species list, and the honey bee population seems to be improving. But we need to do more in the field of ecological sustainability if we do not want to see more of these extinction events continue to happen.
–Janice Willson
References:
https://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2015/01/150113-mass-die-off-disease-animals-environment-science/
https://news.nationalgeographic.com/2018/01/saiga-antelope-killed-bacteria-2015-mass-die-off-central-asia-spd/
https://www.nwhc.usgs.gov/whispers/
