Lecture to Tweed Shire Council on Biodiversity

This blue-green jewel floating in space that we call planet Earth is dying. There are 16,000 species at risk of extinction in the world today. This mass extinction is caused by one species – us – and may well include us.

Australia has the worst reputation of species extinctions having driven 38% of its mammal species extinct in just over 200 years. The Tweed Shire has probably the most biodiversity in the whole country yet a whopping two thirds of our species are at risk of extinction. We could stop biodiversity loss right now – there are plenty of laws in place to stop it but they don’t appear to be enforced.

Biodiversity loss is a much bigger problem than water or climate change, according to Professor Hugh Possingham of University of Queensland. Whereas water shortages could be turned around in 20-40 years and climate change could be turned around in 100 years, biodiversity loss could take between 10,000 to 100,000 years to turn around.

The human species needs biodiversity to survive. We live in a complex web of life that has taken billions of years to evolve. If bees became extinct all of life on this planet would end in just four years, according to Einstein. If plankton became extinct, we wouldn’t have enough oxygen to breathe. Even earthworms tilling and fertilising the soil are more ecologically important than humans.

A healthy ecosystem needs a variety of species each with large populations and strong gene pools – like a jungle teeming with life. But we clearcut land and overfish the oceans, destroying ecosystems and species. Our oceans are in dire crisis having been overfished and polluted, with dead zones growing every year. We are chopping down rainforests faster than what we can replant.

We act like they will be there forever – but our resources are finite. If we keep consuming and populating at the rate we are going we will hit a wall, a Malthusian ceiling of misery where life won’t be worth living.

Now is the time – not tomorrow.

The Convention on Biodiversity, to which Australia is a party, has as its aim to significantly reduce biodiversity loss by 2010. Every loss of species is a threat to global biodiversity. The Convention is concerned with the moral and ethical aspects of biodiversity loss.

How can Council abide by these international regulations? By considering the ethical aspect of biodiversity i.e. having reverence for life. Animals have feelings, just like us. They feel happy, sad, lonely, they grieve. They fear death and they love their families. When their habitat is destroyed, they die – in terror. Can you imagine how that would feel?

In Queensland between 1998 and 2004 a total of 104 million animals died as a result of land-clearing. If we had compassion for animals, we wouldn’t be doing this. There would be no species loss and no extinctions. But we humans have a habit of seeing animals as resources to harvest and manage instead of sentient beings with feelings and the right to live in peace.

What is needed is a paradigm shift away from being anthropocentric to being biocentric – where life itself is the centre of our Earth, not humans. It’s about practising the Golden Rule.

If Council had reverence for life it would reject a town of 10,000 people for Kings Forest/Cobaki Lakes where 30 endangered species plus the second largest colony of koalas in the shire live. Council would zone it as a sanctuary instead.

Council would reject a car-crash rally tearing through national parks and habitat where koalas and endangered species live. Why wait till a species is at risk to protect it? By the time species reach the tipping point it’s too late and we never know when that tipping point is.

If Council had compassion it would have funding for the Koala Recovery Plan, which the current budget fails to do. Council would put biodiversity protection ahead of development, since all developments are a nail in the coffin of wildlife.

Council would also put overpasses, road culverts, signs and exclusion fences at known road kill hotspots and they would stop using toxic pesticides from Monsanto that bio-accumulate and lead to more species extinctions.

If the people in power had wisdom, they would make the Tweed Shire a model for the rest of the world on how to slow down or stop biodiversity loss. That’s what we – the voters – want. We want YOU to protect the crown jewels of the Green Caldron, which are its biodiversity. Not only for the sake of our grandkids but for the sake of all the non-human creatures and for the planet.

Our future depends on the decisions you Councillors make over the coming months and years. Please change your policies. Change your priorities. Change your heart – before it’s too late. We are running out of time.

Menkit Prince