Web of life unravelling, wildlife biologist says [View all]

[GliderGuider]

Web of life unravelling, wildlife biologist says

Wildlife biologist Neil Dawe says he wouldn't be surprised if the generation after him witnesses the extinction of humanity.

All around him, even in a place as beautiful as the Little Qualicum River estuary, his office for 30 years as a biologist for the Canadian Wildlife Service, he sees the unravelling of "the web of life."

Indeed, it's an overabundance of people, perhaps by five-fold, which is driving resource extraction and consumption beyond a sustainable planet, he says.

"Economic growth is the biggest destroyer of the ecology," he says. "Those people who think you can have a growing economy and a healthy environment are wrong. "If we don't reduce our numbers, nature will do it for us."

A five-fold overabundance of people? Having our numbers pruned to a billion or so would have been a very good beginning. It might have given us time to decide what we wanted to be when we grew up. But I can't quiet my niggling suspicion that his first sentence has it right. Climate change and ocean acidification could easily put a stop to the human adventure within the next couple of generations.