With Friends Like These, Wilderness and Biodiversity Do Not Need Enemies

THE HUMAN FOOTPRINT is growing at the expense of other species and the integrity of ecosystems.¹ What poet-of-the-wild Gary Snyder called the “Growth-Monster”² remains not just unchecked but embraced, in theory and practice, by virtually all human societies.³ There is nothing new in this situation—it has been accelerating for several millennia and especially for the last few hundred years; nor is there anything new in the arguments made by those who justify it.⁴ Although the expression of self-righteous greed is rarer and sounds extreme amidst the claims of business and political leaders that biodiversity is important, human behavior—judged by its consequences— has not changed much: We take more and more, and we continue to squander a heritage that we can never replace. Each loss of species brought about by humans diminishes not only the Earth community but all who remain.