Daniel Botkin comments on proposed ‘Red List’ of Endangered Ecosystems
Dr. Daniel B. Botkin, author of THE MOON IN THE NAUTILUS SHELL: DISCORDANT HARMONIES RECONSIDERED, was asked to comment on the proposed “Red List” of Endangered Ecosystems. To follow is the story by Becky Oskin, OurAmazingPlanet Contributor –
The International Union for the Conservation of Nature moved closer to approving its new Red List of Ecosystems, which measures an ecosystem’s risk of collapse, this week at the World Conservation Congress in South Korea. The IUCN is known for its authoritative Red List of Threatened Species, which created globally accepted criteria for assessing extinction risk. The new conservation tool takes a similar approach to entire ecosystems, determining the danger to an individual ecosystem, comparable to measuring the danger of a species going extinct. Scientists presented several test cases for the ecosystem list at the meeting, in preparation for the official launch of the Red List next year. A formal proposal to IUCN leadership to adopt the Red List criteria is planned for early 2013, said Jon Paul Rodriguez, leader of the IUCN Commission on Ecosystem Management’s Ecosystems Red List Thematic Group. Funding is in place for identifying vulnerable, endangered or critically endangered ecosystems in the Americas, from Alaska to Patagonia, by 2014, Rodriguez told OurAmazingPlanet. Organizers hope to complete global coverage by 2025. Ecosystem extinction?
The details of the criteria that will be used to assess which ecosystems are in danger are planned for publication in a scientific journal later this year.
According to the IUCN, the list will help guide conservation action, including land use planning and investment priorities, by evaluating the risks of ecosystem collapse.
“The risk assessment will help people identify where key threats are, and then identify what can we do about it,” said Edmund Barrow, head of the IUCN’s Ecosystem Management Program.
“We limit the assessment to the likelihood of an ecosystem disappearing,” Rodriguez said. “We’re letting others take it a step further into the priority-setting world.”
Daniel Botkin, ecosystems expert and author of THE MOON IN THE NAUTILUS SHELL (click here to learn more)
An ecosystem is an area of land and/or water plus the species living there. For example, an ecosystem could be a lake or system of lakes, a mountain or mountain range, a river or river basin, a coral reef or group of reefs, an expanse of desert or a set of caves.
Not all of those who study ecosystems agree with the idea of the list. Ecosystems expert Daniel Botkin said “it doesn’t make sense”to compare ecosystems to species.”You can’t really talk about the extinction of an ecosystem,” said Botkin, a professor emeritus at the University of California, Santa Barbara, and author of a new book on climate change and extinctions, “The Moon and the Nautilus Shell.” “Ecosystems are systems that are dynamic and changing. An ecosystem doesn’t disappear when one species disappears and another moves in,” Botkin told OurAmazingPlanet.
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