July 10, 2017 by Chris D Thomas,
The Conversation
Animals and plants are seemingly
disappearing faster than at any time since the dinosaurs died out, 66m years
ago. The death knell tolls for life on Earth. Rhinos will soon be gone unless
we defend them, Mexico's final few Vaquita
porpoises are drowning in fishing nets, and in America, Franklin trees
survive only in parks and gardens.
Yet the survivors are taking
advantage of new opportunities created by humans. Many are spreading into new
parts of the world, adapting to new conditions, and even evolving into new species. In some respects,
diversity is actually increasing in the human epoch, the Anthropocene. It is
these biological gains that I contemplate in a new book, Inheritors
of the Earth: How Nature is Thriving in and Age of Extinction, in which I
argue that it is no longer credible for us to take a loss-only view of the
world's biodiversity.
The beneficiaries surround us
all. Glancing out of my study window, I see poppies and camomile plants
sprouting in the margins of the adjacent barley field. These plants are
southern European "weeds" taking advantage of a new human-created
habitat. When I visit London, I see pigeons nesting on human-built cliffs
(their ancestors nested on sea cliffs) and I listen out for the cries of
skyscraper-dwelling peregrine falcons which hunt them.
Climate change has brought tree
bumblebees from continental Europe to my Yorkshire garden in recent years. They
are joined by an influx of world travellers, moved by humans as ornamental
garden plants, pets, crops, and livestock, or simply by accident, before they escaped
into the wild. Neither the hares nor the rabbits in my field are
"native" to Britain.
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