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beebeereebozo t1_j3fib3p wrote

Why should I devote 10% of my land to birds?

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[deleted] t1_j3fryyc wrote

In my opinion, that discussion is really the core issue, and one that isn't talked about enough.

As a society, we don't have a widespread agreement on how much importance to place on the continued existence of wildlife. Hence, whenever this sort of this comes up, you have different groups who are essentially arguing from wildly different core beliefs, making it very hard to come to agreements. You've got people with core theses ranging from:

  • Wildlife has an intrinsic right to exist for its own sake, and we should protect that, even at the expense of human civilization.

  • Wildlife has a right to exist, provided it isn't impeding human civilization too much.

  • Wildlife should exist because it provides tourism benefits, and hence should only exist in the context of human-accessible zones like national parks (No fully blocked off nature preserves)

  • Wildlife should only be promoted insofar as it has direct benefits to civilization, for instance in pest control

  • Wildlife is a nuisance that should be eliminated wherever possible in favor of technological solutions to pests / pollination / etc., as these are more controllable/reliable.

None of these these are fundamentally "right" or "wrong". Instead they are, quite simply, different ways of looking at the world. And people following different ones of these will very rarely agree on what we should do about protecting wildlife areas. And even more rarely will agree on the discussion points leading to an individual action to preserve / not-preserve an area.

Hence you end up with situations like this, where one side argues "We must preserve at least 10% of all farmland for bird habitat because birds deserve to exist", and another side argues "Preserving 10% of land would hurt human development, and birds don't do anything uniquely useful for us anyways", and a third argues "We should do a study to optimize the amount of land preserved to maximize food output given the benefit that bird populations have on controlling agricultural pests". Reconciling those is hard.

We largely know how to get wildlife populations to bounce back: give them habitat. The issue is agreeing how much habitat to give them. And that's much more a philosophical discussion point where we work out what intrinsic value we place in wildlife, rather than biological sciences one where we exhaustively calculate relative pros and cons of preservation.

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beebeereebozo t1_j3g294m wrote

I see it very simply: Minimize the amount of land needed for food production, minimize the amount of land converted to ag and other commercial uses. That mean intensive ag zones and untouched native habitat, not some patchwork of the two.

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genericHumanName1 t1_j3izbac wrote

Why not some patchwork of the two? Even if you minimize and isolate the amount of land needed, it'll still be a lot and stay connected to wildlife. It is a good idea to make the agricultural land more wildlife friendly.

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beebeereebozo t1_j3koa2v wrote

It's a matter of best use. For instance, if my farm is 100% Class I soil and I have good water, devoting 10% to "nature" means 10% less production and additional cost for preserving that land applied against productive land. Then, that production needs to be made up somewhere else. What is of greater environmental benefit, a 10% patchwork that really isn't "natural", reduces efficiency, and increases cost of food, or preserving contiguous swaths of land in its natural state?

Now, if a significant portion of my land was marginal for farming and there was an incentive for maintaining it as natural habitat, that's a different matter.

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nautilist t1_j3oeb6z wrote

It's not simply philosophy - biodiverse forests store twice as much carbon dioxide as monocultures. Our conversion of natural ecosystems to farmed monocultures is a factor in causing climate change. Per articles such as this one.

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