Community action on biodiversity

Orang-Utan In Bukit Lawang, Nord Sumatra. January 2006. Attribution: Tbachner

The aim of this page is to recognise, celebrate and encourage the self-empowerment of community agency networks (CANs) and community groups undertaking or involved in Community action on biodiversity. Learn about how communities positively impact through innovations, different projects and collaborations.

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  • News To help save a species Mountain bongo antelope fly from Florida to Kenya, news.mongabay.com (Feb 27, 2025)
  • News ‘I felt death in the flames’: how lighting a forest fire inspired one man to transform barren ranches into rainforest, theguardian.com (Jan 22, 2025)
  • News When golf courses go wild, rewildingmag.com (Jan 21, 2025) — non-profits, trusts and cities converting manicured greens into places where wildlife, plants and people can flourish
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Events

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Community action projects

Wildlife garden

From Wikipedia:Wildlife garden

A wildlife garden (or habitat garden or backyard restoration) is an environment created with the purpose to serve as a sustainable haven for surrounding wildlife. Wildlife gardens contain a variety of habitats that cater to native and local plants, birds, amphibians, reptiles, insects, mammals and so on, and are meant to sustain locally native flora and fauna. Other names this type of gardening goes by can vary, prominent ones being habitat, ecology, and conservation gardening.

Both public and private gardens can be specifically transformed to attract the native wildlife, and in doing so, provide a natural array of support through available shelter and sustenance. This method of gardening can be a form of restoration in private gardens as much as those in public, as they contribute to connectivity due to the variability of their scattered locations, as well as an increased habitat availability.

Establishing a garden that emulates the environment before the residence was built and/or renders the garden similar to intact wild areas nearby (rewilding) will allow natural systems to interact and establish an equilibrium, ultimately minimizing the need for gardener maintenance and intervention. Wildlife gardens can also play an essential role in biological pest control, and also promote biodiversity, native plantings, and generally benefit the wider environment. Some environmental benefits include the reduction in pest populations through the natural mechanism of biological pest control, by helping reduce the need for pesticides. Habitat gardens also provide the environment an ecosystem service by recharging aquifers by intercepting rainfall.

Wildlife corridor

From Wikipedia:Wildlife corridor

A wildlife corridor, also known as a habitat corridor, or green corridor, is a designated area that connects wildlife populations that have been separated by human activities or structures, such as development, roads, or land clearings. These corridors enable movement of individuals between populations, which helps to prevent negative effects of inbreeding and reduced genetic diversity, often caused by genetic drift, that can occur in isolated populations. Additionally, corridors support the re-establishment of populations that may have been reduced or wiped out due to random events like fires or disease. They can also mitigate some of the severe impacts of habitat fragmentation, a result of urbanization that divides habitat areas and restricts animal movement. Habitat fragmentation from human development poses an increasing threat to biodiversity, and habitat corridors help to reduce its harmful effects. Corridors aside from their benefit to vulnerable wildlife populations can conflict with communities surrounding them when human-wildlife conflicts are involved. In other communities the benefits of wildlife corridors to wildlife conservation are used and managed by indigenous communities.

Resources

Visions

  • Our Goals for 2030, nature.org, (The Nature Conservancy)

Organisations working with communities

From Wikipedia:The Nature Conservancy

The Nature Conservancy (TNC) is a global environmental organization headquartered in Arlington, Virginia, United States. As of 2021, it works via affiliates or branches in 79 countries and territories, as well as across every state in the US.

Founded in 1951, The Nature Conservancy has over one million members globally as of 2021 and has protected more than 119 million acres (48 million ha) of land in its history. As of 2014, it is the largest environmental non-profit organization by assets and revenue in the Americas.

Citizens data initiative

Summary data from Our World in Data

  • Life on earth is dominated by plants – they make up 82% of global biomass.
  • The animal kingdom makes up just 0.4% of global biomass.
  • Humans account for just 0.01% of biomass. However, our livestock outweighs wild mammals and birds ten-fold.
  • 86% of life is in terrestrial environments; 13% in the deep subsurface; and just 1% in marine environments.
  • The tropics are home to the most diverse and unique ecosystems. They tend to have the most endemic species.[1]

Other data

  • More than 1,200 species of bats comprise nearly a quarter of all mammals, and their ecological services are essential to human economies and the health of whole ecosystems worldwide. Source: unep.org, 21 January 2011
  • In Asia, more than 70 percent of primates are classified on the IUCN Red List as Vulnerable, Endangered or Critically Endangered – meaning they could disappear forever in the near future. Source: IUCN, August 2008
  • The great apes are the closest living relatives to man, bonobos sharing 98.4 per cent of our DNA, gorillas 97.7 per cent and orang-utans 96.4 per cent. Source: Defra

Inspiration

Maps

Quotes

"We are not defending nature, we are nature defending itself" Resistencia Indigena[2]

"I believe in God, only I spell it Nature." Frank Lloyd Wright

"If you hurt nature you are hurting yourself" ~ J Krishnamurti

Nature needs half

From Wikipedia:WILD Foundation § Nature Needs Half

At the 9th World Wilderness Congress in Mérida, Mexico, WILD, with the collaboration of a spectrum of international organizations, governments and individuals, introduced Nature Needs Half, which aspires that humans give up use of half of land and water on Earth, in order to support wilderness. Marine biologist Sylvia Earle and Jane Goodall have endorsed Nature Needs Half, with Earle's only criticism being that she "hoped that half would be enough". Since its inception, WILD has begun collecting and conducting case studies of places around the world that have, or are on track to achieve, at least half protection.

Biodiversity in agriculture

From Wikipedia:Biodiversity in agriculture

Biodiversity in agriculture is the measure of biodiversity found on agricultural land. Biodiversity is the total diversity of species present in an area at all levels of biological organization. It is characterized by heterogeneous habitats that support the diverse ecological structure. In agricultural areas, biodiversity decreases as varying landscapes are lost and native plants are replaced with cultivated crops. Increasing biodiversity in agriculture can increase the sustainability of farms through the restoration of ecosystem services that aid in regulating agricultural lands. Biodiversity in agriculture can be increased through the process of agroecological restoration, as farm biodiversity is an aspect of agroecology.

Biodiversity is the measure of biotic and abiotic diversity in an ecosystem, described by heterogeneity. The loss of biodiversity in agriculture has been an increasing issue since the global increase of food demands and success of popular crops. This loss of heterogeneity declines species biodiversity on agricultural lands. Biodiversity in agriculture is essential in providing ecosystem services, which conserves biodiversity while providing agricultural services.

Cities and biodiversity

Cities and Biodiversity Outlook

Campaigns

  • Nature Positive, Global Goal for Nature: Nature Positive by 2030. "We need to halt and reverse nature loss measured from a baseline of 2020, through increasing the health, abundance, diversity and resilience of species, populations and ecosystems so that by 2030 nature is visibly and measurably on the path of recovery."
  • No to Biodiversity Offsetting!

About Biodiversity

From Wikipedia:Biodiversity

Biodiversity is the variability of life on Earth. It can be measured on various levels. There is for example genetic variability, species diversity, ecosystem diversity and phylogenetic diversity. Diversity is not distributed evenly on Earth. It is greater in the tropics as a result of the warm climate and high primary productivity in the region near the equator. Tropical forest ecosystems cover less than one-fifth of Earth's terrestrial area and contain about 50% of the world's species. There are latitudinal gradients in species diversity for both marine and terrestrial taxa.

See also: Biological diversity, Natural climate solutions, Ethical consumerism, Extinction Rebellion, Food activism

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External links

References

  1. ↑ ourworldindata.org, Retrieved ~~~~~
  2. ↑ Wild Open
  3. ↑ International Animal Rescue
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