Biodiversity, Grass Roots, Climate Change, and Us

“The significance of the Chicago area far transcends local importance. You’re working on globally irreplaceable resources that are not represented as well anywhere else on Earth.” 

These words to thousands of volunteers and professionals from Doug Ladd provided an electrifying keynote to the 2009 Wild Things conference. Ladd, a widely respected author and Science Director for the Missouri Nature Conservancy, reminded us that the increasingly threatened richness of rare species and ecosystems in the Chicago region is unmatched anywhere in what is now called “the corn belt.” That 2009 keynote address still resonates today, perhaps more than ever - and it increasingly applies to all Illinois Nature Preserves and other biodiversity.  

 

Ladd acknowledged the challenge of climate change but pointed out that “global habitat destruction and habitat degradation comprise a more imminent threat than that. We have to sustain the habitats we have, to have a chance to react to climate change.”

Climate change threatens our prairie, woodland, and wetland biodiversity.
If species or genetic alleles go extinct, it's too late.
The planet will never get back what millions of years of evolution produced.

Ladd also talked about the importance of metropolitan areas in the future of the planet. “For the first time in human history, more people now live in metropolitan areas than rural.” For both sociological and ecological reasons, he hailed the Chicago region as “a world model.” In all his travels, working on many priority conservation areas throughout “the New World,” he found no other grass roots effort “that has been so successful at creating a unified vision and weaving it into the fabric of society. So what you’re wrestling with here is really the laboratory that’s going to determine the success or failure of conservation over much of the world.”

 

Sometimes it takes an outsider to see the bigger picture. Hundreds of people emerged from “Wild Things” with renewed energy to protect wildlife, habitat, and the whole ecosystem.

 

Ladd is one of the most knowledgeable and respected conservation practitioners in the Midwest. He got his start and initial training in the Chicago Wilderness region and then spent several decades as Director of Science for the Nature Conservancy of Missouri. 

 

He recommended that we:

 

1)    Recognize our ignorance—Stay humble with knowledge that we work in an evolving science.  We know enough to take action but still have a lot to learn.  Above all else, we need to learn from observation of what is happening on the ground and adapt our ongoing management accordingly.

 

2)    Avoid getting caught up in ‘Big Picture’ issues—Organisms are the fundamental units we are charged with carrying through time and to protect them we need to know the organisms.  If we’ve lost the species, we’ve lost nature.

 

3)    Remember people are a part of our biological systems—We should fully embrace and celebrate that we are interdependent parts of the ecosystems we aim to protect.  They need us, we need them.

 

4)    Be cognizant of our past—Being aware of what has happened to the land we conserve provides important insights and the sort of nuanced understanding critical for making management decisions and interpreting their impacts.  We cannot recreate pre-settlement conditions, but need to be aware of the range of conditions that sustained healthy nature in order to be good stewards.

 

5)    Know the enemy—We often make quick reactions to noncritical factors rather than dispassionately assessing threats to biological systems. Effective conservation action can only be taken once threats have been identified and understood.

 

6)    Be better at valuing Nature—Ecosystems provide services (such as water filtration).  Showing the ‘cost of not conserving’ (i.e. the need for additional water treatment facilities) can be persuasive to those unmoved by moral and esthetic arguments alone.  

 

7)    Be vigilant about protecting the remnants we do still have—Don’t be swayed by a compromise that results in the loss of something irreplaceable.  Do no harm to existing natural areas—let the organisms by their response tell us how our natural areas are performing.  The exceedingly few existing remnants are truly irreplaceable and should be treated as sacred.

 

8)    Avoid the false prophets of universal greenery—It is almost never simple or universal.  The media and general public are attracted to simple messages, like “plant trees to combat global warming” even though in this latitude the science suggests trees won’t help.  We should be skeptical consumers and careful educators. 

 

9)    Nurture a permanent stewardship ethic—It is a high privilege to steward our remaining natural areas through time.  As long as our natural areas exist they will be bombarded by invasive species and the adverse impacts resulting from the altered conditions.  We need to plan for multi-generational commitment to stewardship.

 

10) Grow beyond our borders—“You are the ray of hope for urban conservation” but we need to be better about sharing lessons (both success and failure) and unifying urban conservation.  This critical mass and ground swell of involvement in reuniting people and nature needs to be exported to the rest of the world.  

The next Wild Things Conference will be February 25th, 2023.