Dedicated to the memory of E.O. Wilson and Thomas Lovejoy. May their legacy for advocating for biodiversity become amplified by all who admire their work.
“I am the Lorax, I speak for the Trees.” Dr. Seuss
I am in love with the bright blue speck Neil Degrasse Tyson says is what the Earth looks like as seen from Neptune. I have long identified with Dr. Seuss’ character, the Lorax, for years as someone who tries to speak for the trees and the nature they shelter under their branches. This bright blue spec is full of life besides humans and each one fascinates me. But if you are also a student of Earth’s systems and creatures, what I like to call an ‘Earth biographer’, you know that these fascinating beings are disappearing in the Earth’s 6th mass extinction. It is the 6th time life on this blue speck has crashed in its 4.3-billion-year existence.
This time, however, it is not a huge asteroid that is killing them off. It is not a cyclical ice age or a phenomenon beyond our control. This time, in the 21st century, with access to all of this information in the ubiquitous cell phones most carry around, we must admit that we are the asteroid. The oppressive weight of our numbers is killing off the Lynx and the Lemurs. Although the Lynx (Lynx Canadensis) lives in a continent 8,653 miles away from the island home of all sorts of amazing Lemurs, they suffer from the same malady, overpopulation.
Humans have taken over Planet Earth due to our clever ways of mining her resources, conquering diseases, extending our lives, expanding where we can live and preventing early deaths. We have made it our priority to prevent the natural things that would have curbed our success as a species. We continue to let age-old stories about our superiority to others dictate our actions including the idea that we must multiply and fill the earth.
Earth biographers know that a species at the top of life’s food chain, in need of plants and animals, water and resources to support it, cannot also become the most numerous one, without dire consequences.
The Lynx depends mostly on the abundance of snowshoe hares. We know that climate change is making it harder for both this predator and prey to exist. But it is even harder to exist when its forest habitats are cut down.
The forest habitats of these two unrelated species are being cut down for related reasons: human encroachment fueled by overpopulation and its continued growth.
Many other “Loraxes” out there say they love wildlife and have formed thousands of conservation organizations but are loathe to admit what would really save wildlife. They advocate for them with their money and time but not to the point of success. They focus on the downstream issues: loss of habitat, and pollution, the switching of lead shot to copper bullets, the elimination of pesticides, the purchase of remaining museum pieces of open land. They now love to promote the idea that the switching to other sources of energy will help when that will only accelerate our takeover of earth. They tout electric vehicles as if that will somehow be our saving grace, even though these expensive cars need wildlife-destroying freeways too. They eschew discussing that the general overtaking of other species, especially edible ones, is due to our success as a species on this little blue speck. It is due to the tidal wave of overpopulation.
If we want to really save species and the biodiversity that is left we must see growth of the human enterprise, made up of our numbers and our consumption, as a monster. The growth monster is everywhere. The evidence for it is in the rivers which no longer run to the ocean, the skyscrapers that take over the night sky obliterating any chance of seeing the stars. The growth monster is evident in the ever-bigger boats, yachts, and cruise ships we build. We bear witness to it in the extravagant mansions that billionaires believe they must live in, using helicopters for transportation so that they don’t have to be stuck in overpopulation’s traffic jams.
The growth monster is in the ringing of the bells of Wall Street and the way we salivate every time the stock market chews up another chunk of nature. Bitcoin is making some rich, so we conveniently ignore how much energy it takes to create the computers and run the algorithms that characterize this new way to destroy wildlife habitat.
It seems that I have digressed from my premise, but I have not. Growth is the monster breathing down the necks of wildlife worldwide. The 1300 species now on the US Endangered Species list are endangered by growth of a wealthy ‘first world’ overpopulated country while others in the developing world are being destroyed by overpopulation, population growth and poverty. The threatened wildlife species don’t care whether you destroy their homes for a new condo development or to make way for a rice paddy to grow food, the result is the same. The Lynx and the Lemurs don’t get to live there anymore. They just get to join the infamous list that announces to the world of their pending demise.
I love gregarious Lemurs and I Love the ever-secretive Lynx. I have not seen either of them but my chances of seeing the Lynx and saving it saving from extinction are much greater because we share the same borders. Their future is more within my reach. Both creatures suffer from the success of humanity around them. Both have less and less nature to survive in, both experience the loss of habitat - one from a poor but growing nation, one from a rich but growing nation. The US is in the top ten of the highest median per capita income countries and Madagascar is in the top ten of the lowest median per capita income countries. The Lynx and the Lemurs have no access to their bank accounts, they just ‘know’ that the expansion of the rich and the poor both destroy the natural areas where they live.
Madagascar has been in the news lately due to the horrific suffering of its people. There are many factors, but the one that is avoided in the media is the fact that this island nation has increased by approximately 23 million people in my lifetime, from 1954 to 2021. This volcanic island has only been inhabited by humans for the last 1300 years, but they have been busy. First cutting down its ‘exotic’ trees to sell, then intensive rice farming took over. Most of it is mountainous with the tallest peak reaching over 9,400 feet, and now millions more have to eke out a living on its poor soils. As their numbers increase they more aggressively cut down the habitat of some of the most unique creatures on earth. Thirty one per cent of the 110 species of its lemurs are now critically endangered due to this takeover of their habitat. One sobering statistic says that there are now more long-tailed lemurs in zoos around the world than in Madagascar.
Here in the US, 181 million people have been added to our country in my lifetime, all needing either to sprawl out over former habitat, or contribute to density which creates many ecological issues including draining local aquifers and rivers so that downstream animals are left to fend for themselves.
It is no coincidence that the number of endangered species in the US has grown along with our population. There are now 1300 on this list and it is growing right along with us. Our growth monster is just as dangerous to wildlife as Madagascar’s even though it manifests in different ways. Whether your habitat is being reduced because of illegal logging and farming or because an apartment high-rise is slated to be built, where open land used to be, the threat is just as great and for the same reason. Every time we need to accommodate more people, wildlife suffers.
But unless you live and work with the people of Madagascar, your chance of saving the lemurs from extinction is pretty slim. Our political reach to curb Madagascar’s population growth, which is fueled by an average of 4.1 births per woman and a lack of cultural acceptance and access to birth control, is very limited. A primatologist who studies lemurs was hopeful that the 2014 IMAX film on lemurs would raise awareness and help the precarious status of these unique, funny primates. But unfortunately, she was wrong. Awareness in the developed world is a poor tool for protecting wild animals when out of control population growth is the culprit.
And what about our endangered species here in the US? How can we take our foot of the growth pedal? How can we stop developing land that the Lynx and others need? We have to stop growing and then reduce our numbers.
In the US we already sit at the precariously dangerous number of over 332 million people, and we are growing by over a million a year. Our land is full. Our land is more than full. Promoting small families would seem like a relatively easy path of advocacy. As a whole, we are not as culturally attached to large families as we once were when large families were needed to run our farms. The economic challenges of having kids have made them a luxury to many young people struggling to find ways to cover their own cost of living.
Growth is a two-headed monster. It comes from inside and outside sources. In Madagascar it comes mostly from inside sources and in the US it comes increasingly from outside sources. Just as it doesn’t matter to the Lynx or the Lemurs why their forests are being cut down, it also doesn’t matter whether the growth is coming from inside the country, or outside the country. What matters is that those targeting growth as the enemy of wildlife are targeting the appropriate source of growth. Stopping immigration to Madagascar or stopping high fertility in the US are equally futile, because immigration to Madagascar and high fertility in the US are not the main problems each of these countries faces.
When seen through the eyes of an Earth biographer, otherwise known as tree-hugging Lorax, targeting the appropriate source of growth is the only way out of protecting our remaining biodiversity. Removing the immigration story from its quicksand tales is not impossible. We can love our immigrants but work to stop mass immigration. When our policies are set by our leaders with other than noble motivations, it’s time to give them another look. Roy Beck’s 2021 book, Back of the Hiring Line: a 200-Year History of Immigration Surges, Employer Bias and Depression of Black Wealth, is a permission slip to see immigration with new eyes, unburdened by guilt. It is a well-documented non-fiction narrative that needs a deep dive by all who claim racism when they hear the ‘I’ (immigration) word brought up.
We are destined to lose the Lynx and other priceless species due to forecasts of increased growth mostly due to immigration. Eighty-eight % of future growth is projected to be from entrants to our country from elsewhere, according to the PEW Research Center. Our unwillingness to admit this fact, and that we have reached “ecological overshoot” in the US is something for which future wildlife lovers will never forgive us, and they should not.
Note ~ For a more comprehensive analysis of immigration issues, see On the Wrong Track: Why the Endangered Species Act Isn't Enough, Karen I. Shragg, Negative Population Growth, January 2022.
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ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Karen Shragg is a lifelong environmentalist, naturalist, educator, poet, author and overpopulation activist. Karen received her doctorate from the University of St. Thomas in 2002, following two other degrees in education. She has recently retired as a long-time naturalist and nature center director to start the LLC, Move Upstream Environmental Consulting (MUSEC). As a member of the advisory board of the non-profit “World Population Balance”, and “Earth Overshoot”, she has become increasingly alarmed by the lack of discourse surrounding the overpopulation crisis. In 2015, her book Move Upstream: A Call to Solve Overpopulation, was published by Freethought House Press. Her new book moves the discussion further upstream: Change Our Stories, Change our World will be out December 2020, by the same press.
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