The Chain of Extinction

"Save the Whales" became the most successful environmental campaign, when the Blue Whale, humpback whales and other whale species were threatened with imminent extinction.  The polar bear has likewise become the icon of the climate crisis.  It still faces likely extinction.

The Earth is undergoing what scientists consider the sixth mass extinction in the planet's known lifetime.  Normally, just one amphibian species goes extinct every thousand years.  Now it may be as many as 45,000.  And extinction rates among "many other groups" (writes Elizabeth Kolbert in her 2014 book The Sixth Extinction) "are approaching amphibian levels."

There are different contributing reasons for various groups and species, though humans are most often the final cause.  The climate crisis is the greatest overall threat but there are many others.

As human civilization cuts itself off from daily contact with the rest of life, all this goes on almost invisibly.  So one question is, which of the potentially iconic animals (or plants) will go extinct first, and shake some sense into us (for however long it last)?  The great apes?  Tigers?  Polar bears?

There's a new candidate now, which suggests an ominous problem for the near future.  That species is the Monarch butterfly.  The annual count in California, where the western Monarchs winter, was down 86% from the previous year.  This represents a 99.4 percent decline since the 1980s, and an all-time low for the Pacific Coast.  The population is below 1% of what it once was.

The more numerous Eastern Monarchs that winter in Mexico, also showed more than a 90% drop since 1996.  There used to be billions of them.

The Western Monarchs wintering in Marin County were estimated at some 10 million butterflies.  The population is now less than 1% of what it was. Scientists suggest that once it drops below 30,000 butterflies, the species is headed for certain extinction.  It is very close.

If it occurs, the Monarch extinction will be due to particular circumstances that are part of a general trend: pesticides, loss and fragmentation of habitat, and effects of global heating.  Butterflies are among sensitive species and sites that are specifically threatened by the proposed Wall on the southern US border.

 And new studies show the butterflies are not alone.  A much-ignored February headline:Insect numbers are collapsing around the world, which could cause the "catastrophic collapse of nature's ecosystems" and threaten "the survival of mankind".

"More than 40 percent of insect species are declining - and the rate of extinction is about eight times faster than that affecting birds, mammals and reptiles. Based on current trends, insects could be extinct within a century.

Insects make up two-thirds of all life on earth by number. They pollinate plants, enrich our soil, and provide food for larger animals in the food chain. Their loss would be devastating to both agriculture and the environment."

Or as Edward O. Wilson succinctly put it, these are "the little things that run the world."

This analysis of data collected in 27 studies fingers the usual suspects: habitat destruction, pesticides and the climate crisis.  In both habitat destruction and pesticides, the prominent culprit is industrial agriculture.

A member of the European Parliament's agriculture committee succinctly explains why this continues:

"What might accurately be dubbed insectageddon is being driven by the agrichemicals industry. This situation is compounded by compliant politicians and policymakers who fall prey to lobbying pressure and then refuse to implement science-driven policy to protect wildlife. This has meant that over the past five decades conventional farmers have forgotten the natural systems they once relied on to control pests. Non-organic agricultural systems are highly dependent on chemicals, so feeding a vicious circle."

This is no longer a matter of family farmers spraying a harmful pesticide.  It is saturation on industrial scale.  In his 2012 book Apocalyptic Planet, Craig Childs describes exploring an industrial cornfield in Iowa where he saw no living thing other than corn.  This method kills pests but also life forms that replenish the soil.  Soon not even corn will grow here.

The growth of GMO agriculture is part of this death spiral.  A serious mistake is made when scientists and others lump together anti-GMO advocates with climate crisis deniers as examples of "anti-science" superstition.  The safety of genetically modified food is only part of the issue.  Most of the damage is being done by the intensive use of pesticides on GMO crops, and the spread of genetically modified seeds.  It may not be anti-agrichemical-sponsored science.  But it is the science of life.

The loss of an iconic species is felt emotionally.  Some ordinary beauty leaves the world.  I remember a childhood in which butterflies of all kinds and colors were plentiful in my back yard, including Monarchs and Monarch look-alikes.  Now here on the North Coast we feel fortunate to see one large butterfly for a day or two each year.  That's not a scientific comparison, but it suggests the loss we feel.

But it's more than what we feel.  It's what we eat.  It's what we are, whether we choose to see it or not.  It's the world that sustains our species.  And we're destroying it, while obsessing on real but comparatively much less important news.