Biodiversity in the new parlance,
is the key to the maintenance
of the world as we know it.
Life in a local site struck down by
a passing storm springs back quickly
because enough diversity still exists.
Opportunistic species evolved
for just such an occasion.
Rush in to fill the spaces they
entrained the succession that circles
back to something resembling the
original state of the environment.
This is the Assembly of life that
took a billion years to evolve.
E.O. Wilson.
Hi, I'm Ben Bobowski,
Chief of Resource Stewardship
at Rocky Mountain National Park.
In February 2014,
I had the good fortune to spend
time with Doctor E. O. Wilson,
or as he prefers, Ed.
Ed is a world renowned scientist
published more than 25 books,
hundreds of scientific papers,
explorer and discoverer of new species
to science all over the world.
Now in his eighth decade,
having been recognized with most
of the awards of biologists can.
Including two Pulitzer prizes
you might expect to find a person
rested and well into retirement,
but that's hardly the person I came to know.
On the campus of Duke University
and through the support of the E. O.
Wilson Biodiversity Foundation
and the Estes Institute, Ed
and I shared a conversation about
himself biodiversity the future
and all living organisms small.
And I'd like to introduce you to Ed,
and as I got to know him that
February morning. You know,
I don't think there's any better way
in the United States of America to
get people interested in, knowledgeable
about and concerned about the wildlife and
natural environment of the United States.
Because people enter the National
Park to see, to be entertained,
to be astounded, to learn.
They bring their children,
who show them something
new and help teach them.
And the prestige of the
National Park Service
is so great, that it lends an
added dose of authenticity to the entire
experience one has within a park.
Much more than even the collectivity
of gifted teachers.
I think, in our school systems
who are trying to explain to
restless children that if they
went outdoors they would find a
lot of interesting things to see.
Or even though it's to take
those kids outdoors.
You have the same impact.
You get the same impact as the one
I got when I lived briefly in Washington DC.
And I visited repeatedly the National
Museum of Natural History to wander through
the exhibitions, to pull out drawers they
had of butterflies from around the world.
And as a 10 year old kid I was I
was thinking constantly this is
the United States government.
This is the highest level of everything
and these people running our government
and who created this magnificent museum.
really care about this subject
that I'm becoming interested in,
which is butterflies and ants.
And I could look at that time up at the
railing around the upper gallery where
I knew the demigods of science lived.
The curators that were
putting all these things together.
I never saw one alive,
but I knew they were up there.
You know,
it's kind of a scientific
and educational Olympus,
and when I left finally Washington
return to the home state of Alabama,
I knew that there was something grand
and worthwhile and highly valued,
by the United States government and
all these brilliant people that go
to make it make it up and therefore
felt confidence in pursuing a
career from a very early age on.
And I think that same impact is intrinsic
to the National Park system. I was
living in Washington DC as a 9 year
old and I was within walking distance of
Rock Creek Park, which I think is
also in the National Park system.
And I was within walking distance
also with the National Zoo.
We lived at that time in what you would
call a working class neighborhood.
It was white collar working class,
of course, it was not a
wealthy neighborhood at all,
it was
the equivalent of triple deckers
and that sort of thing,
but I could walk out with a homemade net -
butterfly net -
which my stepmother made for me from a broom
handle, a coat hanger bent into a round
shape and the sack of cheesecloth.
Very effective butterfly net and I could
go butterfly and insect hunting. Mmhm.
To this National Park.
It wasn't,
I don't think at that time, a National Park,
but it was a protected area.
And just a few blocks and walk into it.
And then I could go a few more blocks
and walk into the National Zoo and see
all of the wonderful animals there.
How could I not have then developed
into a naturalist, a biologist,
and a student of biodiversity
when I returned to my home state of Alabama?
And how did you build on that in Alabama?
What did you do?
I had the great good fortune of
being recognized very early as a kid,
in the city of Mobile,
not that big of a city, but recognized,
particularly by scout officials.
When I went into the Boy Scouts,
as having an intense interest and
knowledge of things like snakes and
butterflies and all kinds
of insects and things.
Now I reached the age of 14.
In 1943 all the young men aged 17, 18,
19 were gone at war.
And this left very few
young men to serve as counselors
in the local Boy Scout camp.
I suspect that was the
case all over America.
So they had to have a nature counselor.
So they approached me as a 14
year old and said "Would you like
to serve as a nature counselor?"
And I didn't know if I had the
slightest idea of how to do that,
except I knew that I could go there and
maybe persuade the other scouts,
many of whom were my age or
even a year older,
all to join me in nature study.
And by that time I had become to
have pretensions of doing it more or
less professionally the earliest
field guides for turtles and birds
and things like this. And snakes.
And I began to get enthusiastic
about snakes at that time.
How come? Just curious? Well, for two reasons.
One, that that area of the Gulf Coast
has the largest number of snake species,
any place in America.
It's about 40 species,
so by the time I was 16, getting ready
to go into senior year of my high school.
I had actually caught almost all of them,
so I became a snake hunter.
At this time I entered the camp
Pushmataha outside of Mobile and I
quickly discovered that when
I turned to snakes.
Talking with the other scouts,
I had their immediate interest,
so I had the others helped me build cages.
Also done with primitive material,
just light wood and light screen and so
we could set up cages for snakes and I
had just about every scout in the camp
snake hunting as they came and went.
You know,
for weekly periods or for the whole summer.
It was one giant snake hunt at Cape Camp,
Pushmataha, and I'll admit,
I really didn't get very much into
any other kind of Natural History,
but that was enough to get
them all fascinated.
And whenever a snake was found,
the cry would spread across
the camp through the woods around
the little lake and to the place
where the snake cages were captain,
where the boys slept.
Shouted snakes, snakes, snakes,
and I would come running,
and everybody would stand around and
for some reason I had no compunction or
fear of picking up poisonous snakes.
So I would take a little moccasin you
know up and show it and talk about it.
A pygmy rattlers were very common so we
had a big collection of pygmy rattler snakes.
They're only, at most, about a foot long.
They really are pygmy darling little things.
Very difficult to be afraid of
although they rattle their rattles. They were
making a hissing sound and they'll
strike like other rattlers.
So by the time I finished
my stint as nature counselor
believe it or not, at Camp Pushmataha Mobile,
please don't smile at the title,
Camp Pushmataha.
I was not only a lifetime naturalist,
made, stamped,
indelibly and so on but I was
stamped as a teacher.
You know, I was going to be,
I didn't know it at the time,
but I was destined then to become a
scientist who works on biodiversity,
natural history and a teacher, a professor.
And I would like to wish that on all
young kids by the time they enter
their teens that they have a passion.
That then one way or other
contributes significantly
to the interest they develop, to the
expertise they acquire and finally
even influences what professions
they can follow with the enthusiasm
and lifetime dedication.
From diatoms to our largest
deer, microbes to marmots,
Rocky Mountain National Park
is a frontier of discovery yet
to be explored.
Listen in as I aske Ed the question,
"What is wildlife?" And I could be the
world authority.
That's something that I like to stress with
young people about biological diversity,
and I think it's very relevant
to our park system,
where this kind of work can be done.
Select the group of insects,
any or any kind of organisms.
Big or small.
Uh, and if they interest you,
if you could really get some
excitement out of discovering them by,
you know, going searching,
finding them, learning what is known.
Not only would you probably be
lining yourself up for a career,
or at least the very beginning
of a scientific career,
you can become the world authority on them.
Is there somebody out there that would like
to be the world authority on Pigeons?
Step forward.
You could probably be the world
authority by the time you were 25.
If there are 25 year old
World chess champions,
surely there's no problem at all
becoming the world champion on
pigeons. And you're the
person to come to to talk about.
Anyone wanting to know about these
creatures and also the person to
report what's remarkable about them.
They make news to tell about what
the discovery of them. To make that
information available so that
even the general public
hears about these creatures that have
survived, since way before the age of
dinosaurs among us, and are among us.
If you can follow me,
I'm trying to build the drama of it
because it's legitimate because it is drama.
It's real drama in the making of scientists.
I think we need a transformation,
a semantic transformation.
Uhm? Of course,
as I've said many times,
I can't think of anything more fascinating
that would attract my attention more quickly,
I agree, than a grizzly bear,
an elk, a sable antelope,
or my favorite animal a Wolverine.
I'd love someday to actually see
a Wolverine alive in the field somewhere.
Very few naturalists, even ones who've lived
lives where Wolverines are
have seen a Wolverine say more than
once or twice in the in the flesh.
OK,
that's fine,
but now we should come to appreciate
that the bulk of the living world
where most of the bio mass is
the sheer weight of organisms,
the diversity of the Organism is
overwhelmingly smaller organisms.
Smaller animals,
in the case of the animal Kingdom.
And where you might have 10
mammals or 20 mammals,
you easily could have 10,000 kinds of
insects and other small arthropods.
Each one of which is a proper subject,
and promising subject
for scientific research.
And given that they are the
foundation of the ecosystem.
I mean the birds exist because
they feed on insects.
A large percentage of songbirds,
and so on,
and they are that layer between microbes,
which are the dominant foundational
creatures of the world.
And the big ones that catch our attention,
they are the foundation.
And there's so much to see and learn.
So much fascinating about seeing them.
And learning a little bit about them,
I think we should start calling them
wildlife, part of wildlife and understand
that when we're saving a park,
we're not just saving
certain birds and mammals.
But we're also saving up to thousands
of other species which could be with a
little examination and understanding,
also extremely interesting
to us and important,
so I'd like to call all of that wildlife
animal life down to the smallest insects
down to the last little diplura,
and it makes sense.
It's not a radical suggestion.
How many species do we think
there are on the planet,
and what does the future hold for them?
Ed has an informed perspective
that he shares with us.
This is part of the allure
of studying the living world.
Is the totality of biodiversity in the
world and we don't know as scientists say,
for sure to the nearest order of
magnitude we know 2,000,000 that's
order of magnitude 1,000,000.
We're pretty sure there's at least 10
million. One estimate has recently put
8,000,000 as I guess you know,
for the statistical extrapolation.
I think when we start studying
rare species and ones that live in odd
places we haven't thought of looking,
we're going to have that number, actually.
the actual number before we
finish exploring the world past
10 million. But when we go into
the microbial world, then we have no
idea of what we're going to find.
It could go in 10s more,
10 million more.
Thus, I like to say we live in a little
known planet and the sheer challenge
of simply finding out the
full range of biodiversity
on this little known planet,
is something that ought to be kept in mind
bBy the educated public and by young
people looking for a career in science.
But in addition,
uh,
we should keep in mind that we are
undoubtedly eroding away and destroying,
reducing to scarcity and even extinguishing,
probably well into the thousands
of species worldwide,
every year. Where human
activities are expanding so rapidly,
in so many places,
destroying so many habitats,
that a lot of biodiversity is
disappearing and it need not be.
We can save most of it and maybe all of it.
We should try to save all of it if we can,
as at least the goal, the grail.
By knowledge of it.
And so the study of rare and vanishing
species is yet another aspect of
the study of biological diversity,
which I think attracts the attention,
should attract the attention of the public,
not just because of what we're losing.
But also because of the fascination
attending rare and very rare endangered
species and newly extinct ones.
Many people think that the extinction
isn't really a problem because
they've been told correctly that
98% of all the species that live,
have lived, have gone extinct.
And that there are other species
being created by evolution.
Well, that's true,
but they are also leaving out the timescale.
There have been
many more species that existed across
the full span of geologic time,
but that goes back four and
a half billion years,
and it just happens to be a fact
that the average span of life of a
species you know once it evolves,
so it's a distinct species,
splits away from other species,
is very roughly a million years.
So of course you can have large numbers
of species that are born and die
across four and a half billion years,
and but just a very small number of them
will have two or three offspring species,
most of which die, and so on.
So it's been a
game or a drawn out process over
immense periods of time in which
species regularly go extinct,
but are they live an average of
a million years and what we're
doing is shortening their lives
essentially drastically.
And at the same time we know
that new species are created
at the rate of about one
species per million per year.
One species per million per year
went extinct before humans,
one species per million species per year,
were created new.
In other words,
the turnover on human scale very slow,
even though it was very frequent
over geologic scale
going back billions of years.
In terms of 100 year or human
lifespan, it's become alarmingly fast.
It's up the 100 times to 1000 times, we believe,
now faster than it was before humans came.
So we're drawing out,
so to speak from the Earth's bank of
species biodiversity. We're drawing out
uh,
as many as 1000
dollars shall I say,
for every buck we putting back in.
You know what happens to a
bank account when you do that?
We're depleting Earth's biodiversity.
I believe that total biodiversity studies,
like those doing very well in
the Great Smokies National Park
that can take not take too long.
Because depending on where the
park is in the environment.
Of a mountain environment,
you know mid to high mountain
environment like the one that
you're in the Rocky Mountain National Park,
probably has a really small
number of species.
And you could expect if you had experts
attracted and really working hard on it
to have a nearly complete list within,
you know, a fairly short period of time
maybe a decade.
Whereas if you had,
if you were manager of a park
in the Amazon and within that
park you could easily have
shall we say, just as a guess,
three hundred, four hundred, five hundred thousand species?
And then with species
right on the edge of extinction
within the park,
but they occur in an area nearby
over here and new species are
coming in just by migration.
Unlike probably a mountain
park in the Rocky Mountains.
Then it would take generations
to get a real grip on the total
biodiversity of that whole area.
But for most of the parks
in the United States,
I think we could expect to
have pretty complete counts,
uh, counts of species,
including digital photographs of
even the small creatures,
little things that run the world
I like to call them. The foundational
insects, spiders and down to the
mostly arthropods.
We could expect to have that
within a decade or two.
An example of this second example
where complete survey has been done
is the 34 Boston Harbor Islands.
And these are very small islands.
You know few acres each and with
the help of Harvard University,
our entomology department,
Harvard University.
I think what's probably
pretty close to an exhaustive
list of the species,
and where they were found
on the different islands
has been completed with digital
photographs allowing rapid
identification of every one of them.
And I don't know the full
number or the complete number,
that's the number I should keep
in my head,
but I suspect that it's a couple thousand.
And so that's a place where you
can go in the United States and
actually count on seeing the entire
all the wildlife from the seabirds,
to to cottontail rabbits
and on down to the small
creatures and the flowers.
Flowering plants as well.
But it's an example.
A miniature example of what
we probably need to be doing,
and incidentally
that was accomplished
by schoolchildren, in part,
coming to the islands
for classes for which they had expeditions.
Hunting and discovering species and
helping photograph them and identify them,
and so on. It was a
it was a tremendous educational
effort as well as a research effort.
We're able now increasingly to find
out with a few keystrokes everything
known about any particular species out
of the two million known to science.
All the way from microbes and fungi
and the smallest of arthropods on up.
And then of course the flowering plants
of all kinds. 2,000,000 species are
known and that now being thoroughly
cataloged and made available with
photographs and other illustrations
in the Encyclopedia of Life,
which I helped inaugurate in 2003,
I'm proud to say.
And now there is an effort and I
think it's beginning to succeed
to create servers and
easily used methods for identifying
organisms, so, it's possible to
take, already it's possible to take a leaf
from a tree and just put it on a
scanner and identify the tree and
then it can take you immediately
to everything known about that tree,
that species; where it's found
all these characteristics and so on.
The scientists in the park,
or the park naturalists,
would be in a position to
tell you a lot about
that particular ecosystem or that
particular group of organisms you know,
such as well what you've got here,
is a narrow mouth frog.
As you found out when you scanned it,
your picture.
There's just one species here in
the park and pretty scarce here,
but this is a group that if you
just went a little farther South,
you know you'd find 3 species.
In fact, if you went to such and such a park,
you want to see these again,
you'll find all three species down there,
or if you went all the way to Costa Rica,
you could find 20.
You know that kind of talk
and this is what's known.
This is what's not known.
We don't know,
we don't know anything at all
about this pedigree and
those little narrow mouthed
frog they they spend most of their
time underground and tell you I
have to admit to you that nobody has
actually done a serious study of them.
Ed goes on to further project
what the future may become through
the metaphor of a bottleneck.
Yeah,
I introduced that metaphor because
of a perception people have,
a lot of people still have, that
everything is hopeless as far
as the natural environment.
And maybe human environments.
Who is concerned because people
just insist on having more and
more children and we're in the
middle of a population explosion.
But it turns out we're not because in
the middle of a population explosion,
because women throughout the world,
even Africa,
which is notable for having big families.
The population growth rate is slowing.
And then many just about all
countries that are developed and
have any degree, for example, of
women independence,
particularly economic independence,
the growth rate
drops and is alarmingly slow.
If the replacement rate for
human population is 2.1, 2.1
children per woman, the little .1
there is to take care of mortality
before the kid grows up and starts
having children of his or her own.
And. Uh. Virtually every developed country
is either below that now
or or dropping toward it fast.
And the result is a trend by I think
United Nation population analyst,
is that we will peak at
around 10 billion.
Probably by the end of the century we
should be around 9 billion by 2050.
But then it's slowing slowing slowing.
You know it's like the
foot on the pedal on the brake,
pushing harder, harder, and then it peaks at
right, maybe 11 billion, but somewhere
around that and then if trends continue,
unless we start subsidizing
families to have more kids.
Then it begins to drop.
Therefore, this is a serious problem.
Especially given that,
per capita consumption,
the amount that each person needs
to live quality life,
anything even remotely
approaching the American level,
Creating a footprint.
Nice expression,
meaning the amount of land that's
required for each person to have
controlled somewhere in aggregate, where you
get your energy where you get your food,
where you get your water.
So on.
Where you live of course.
That's that's continuing to grow worldwide.
And that's one reason why
just a sort of standard
conservation practices applied
to energy and materials use and
land use really have to be paid
close attention to.
But at any rate,
we are approaching a point where
our
pressure as a species on planet Earth will
stabilize and maybe we can even begin to
come down a little. A the greening revolution
can help towards getting us
out the other side right?
Oh, the green revolution is all about that,
but most people think of, just in
qualitative terms, in general,
is that it we should be doing it
to slow
the process down.
What they haven't thought through
is that we can actually reach
a point where pressure on the
planet by our species will peak
and can be made to come down.
Now,
when it starts to come down and and
particularly you know where there are
fewer species or fewer people on Earth.
Let's be frank,
we really need a lot fewer
people on the Earth,
and that's where we're moving
toward by having just
one child per woman in many cases then
that makes things so much easier.
And then we combine that with
all of these conservation
measures, materials and energy
space used, and the like.
Then we can free up or more
comfortably leave free more of
the world to the rest of life.
That's basically what I
have in mind, to nature.
And the case I want to make.
I think we should be making sure those
of us in conservation biology and
ecology and Natural History should
be making is we're not just talking
about nature reserves where you have
interesting looking plants and animals,
that people can go and look at. We're
talking about the rest of life and we're
talking about the maintenance of the planet.
As it's been sustained for
four and a half billion years.
By the rest of life evolving in a natural
way unobstructed by a human being.
So the bottleneck would be,
we are in good shape as a species,
that is, we've eliminated poverty.
We've eliminated organized violence,
warfare, and the like.
We can do that and we are managing
a pretty good quality of life
for everybody on the planet.
The trends are all in that direction.
You know even today.
And we're saving,
we've saved, a substantial part
of the of the planet
for the rest of life. And
allowing it to evolve,
continually evolve on its own while
providing all of the services and
the basic planetary stability
that it has provided for that
immensely long period of time.
Then the human species will
be in pretty good shape.
I mean,
we we really will be sustainable
and it can be Edenic,
that is, it can be something like
an Eden.
The long term perspective of
hope, for sure. It's more than hope.
It is a projection of what can be real.
And when we reach that point,
when we pass through the bottleneck,
I want to see all of the species now
present in the Rocky Mountain National
Park and other parks in the United States.
I want to see them all still there.
I mean,
I can hope that they will still be there.
Finally,
I couldn't resist asking Ed the question,
"If you're a Ranger at Rocky Mountain
National Park and you had the
opportunity to talk with our visitors,
what might you say?"
Scientists are studying
these interesting creatures,
and we want you to be able to see
some of the more amazing ones that
are peculiar to this park and that
you'll join us in celebrating, uh,
the unique wildlife of this park.
And as you get up toward past 10,000 feet,
you're going to enter
the krummholz period.
I mean,
where all these magnificent trees
that you see clothing the lower
slopes go through a transformation
as they approach tree line and
then then what's above tree line?
Well, what you have here in our park is
a little bit of the Arctic.
We call it the Arctic Alpine and there are,
incidentally, living up there are
species of butterfly.
There's a species of bird
a Marmot.
I don't know exactly what you do have
in the park, but
there's a kind of Marmot that lives
up here and this and that and so on.
We want you to,
we hope you'll be able to enjoy
this amazing transition of the
great forest through the stunted
Forest Zone and then on out into
what's essentially Arctic America.
This is what I would do.
Are you going to offer
me a job? You're hired.
Yeah that would fulfill
a boyhood dream I had.
I figured, you know, that
if I became really good at entomology,
I might get a job eventually as a in
Department of Agriculture advising farmers,
you know, on insect pests.
But I said maybe I could even
hope to be a Ranger in a National Park.
After Ed and I finished celebrating just
how cool it is to be a Park Ranger,
we took a walk on campus together.
It became clear that
each log and pile leaves
we came across tempted Ed to get down on
his knees to discover the ants and
the small things living beneath them.
He challenged me to discover ants on the
tundra of Rocky Mountain National Park.
And upon returning home from Duke
University and with special thanks
to the staff of the Continental
Divide Research Learning Center.
I now know that Ruth Bernstein from
the University of Colorado Boulder was
one of the first to characterize the
Alpine Ant in Rocky nearly 40 years ago.
The Alpine Ant is a reminder of all
things small living amongst our tallest
peaks looking down upon a world that
is more diverse than we ever imagined.