‘WILD’ Needs Us to Save Half for Nature

“Our goal is nothing short of a healthy, vibrant, life-sustaining planet. And we’re going to need your help to achieve it.”

– Nature Needs Half

If you are anything like me, you will find yourself hiding your head in your hands under the daily barrage of dismal news about the state of the planet. If it’s making you feel depressed, helpless and hopeless, please don’t switch off just yet. We have the antidote – a big dollop of good news from the WILD Foundation to re-invigorate and re-empower us. And a challenge.

Passionate people and conservation organisations are changing the world. All they need is for us to play our parts in “the biodiversity revolution” they are creating. There is good news. There is hope. But burying our heads in our hands is not an option. We need the courage to stare in the face the destination we are headed towards if we fail to take action now.

What we stand to lose

Pulitzer Prize-winning biologist and conservationist Edward O. Wilson writes in his 2016 book “Half-Earth: Our Planet’s Fight for Life” of “the complexity, beauty and majesty of Nature” in which “each species is a masterpiece, a creation assembled with extreme care and genius.” These myriad marvels – from axolotl to armadillo, humming bird to hippo, parrot to pangolin, tawny owl to tiger, walrus to wolf, not to mention plant life – are what we stand to lose in this age of the Anthropocene, the 6th age of mass extinction caused entirely by the activities of Man.

endangered snow leopard polar bear grey wolf wildlife

sumatra orangutan endangered ape primate

red blue macaw parrot tropical jungle birds

Yet our species recklessly continues to suffocate the earth under a toxic blanket of new farms, dams, factories and housing that obliterate vital habitat, polluting land, sea and air in the process. And simultaneously persists in giving free rein to our own population growth, and the callous annihilation of non-human animals.

Wilson asks,“What kind of a species are we that we treat the rest of life so cheaply?”

We are, he says, “a danger to ourselves and the rest of life…. the most destructive but unrepentant species in Earth’s history.”

Who can argue with that?

The Age of Loneliness

If we continue on this catastrophic course, the only wild animals left on the sublime planet thronging with life we inherited, will be rats, pigeons and jellyfish. We may of course still have our domesticated plants and animals, but what small comfort for the 4 million dazzling species we look to lose in the next 30 years if we carry on as we are.

We will have entered the Eremocine, the Age of Loneliness. A conquered planet almost devoid of natural life. What a terrifying prospect.

“Our relationship with this planet is badly broken. We need a new story about how we live here. We need a new relationship with the Earth that is thoughtful and balanced.”

– James Brundige, conservationist and wildlife film-maker.

Nature Needs Half

Thoughtful, balanced yes, and bold. Professor Wilson wants to steer us off the road that leads inexorably towards that unthinkable Age of Loneliness, and take a new direction – nothing less than giving over entirely to Nature free from the injurious activity of humans, half the planet. A full 50% of land and sea. And to prove his bold vision is not simply words on a page, ink on paper, he set up the Half-Earth Project: “With science at its core and our transcendent moral obligation to the rest of life at its heart, the Half-Earth Project is working to conserve half the land and sea to safeguard the bulk of biodiversity, including ourselves.”

A bold and radical vision but actually, not a new one. Same idea, different name. Nature Needs Half, the brainchild of the WILD Foundation, first saw the light of day at the 9th World Wilderness Congress held in Mexico in 2009.

So, an entire half the planet for Nature – great idea, but is it translatable into real life? Or is it just a comforting fantasy?

“When it was first launched, this idea didn’t go over so well… Although many conservation leaders admitted to personally supporting the half goal, they believed that publicly aligning themselves with half would ruin their credibility.”

If Nature Needs Half was first mooted a whole 9 years ago, what’s been happening since?

Though his widely read book, “Half Earth” came some years after NNH, what Harvard naturalist E.O.Wilson did achieve through his legendary status, was to lend the Half Earth proposal real credibility and clout. Now “the Executive Secretary of the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD), Cristiana Pasca Palmer, is calling for ambitious actions in advance of the 2020 CBD in Beijing, China. At the same time, many of the world’s most prestigious conservation organizations are in the process of creating a groundbreaking ‘Global Deal for Nature’“, to go hand in hand with the Paris Climate Agreement.

Great news.

But hasn’t the last decade seen more loss of vital biodiverse habitat? Aren’t we already too late?

There are currently across the world 161,000 protected reserves and parks making up somewhere in the region of 15% of Earth’s land area. 15% is still a shortfall from 17%, the unduly modest target the Convention on Biological Diversity originally agreed back in 1992. And of that 15%, a third is inadequately protected and under intense pressure from human activity, leaving a mere 10% properly set aside for Nature.

10%, 15%, 17% – still a long way short of WILD’s and Wilson’s ambitious vision for half the planet. 50%, isn’t more than that gone already?

Well, here comes even better news –

No, we still have half left! We can do this.

There still remains enough wilderness as yet untouched by human blight. And if we can send spacecraft to distant planets, surely we can save our own. There is nothing that cannot be accomplished when we pull together. The trick is to get people on board, and that is exactly what Nature Needs Half is doing. Year on year NNH brings more people and organisations under its umbrella, creating an ever-growing world wide web of conservation partners which include Wilderness Foundation Global, Rewilding Earth, Rewilding Europe, National Geographic, London Zoological Society, Sanctuary Asia, Coalition WILD, Wild Wonders of China, Google Earth Outreach, the Leonardo Di Caprio Foundation, and more.

And now hopefully, us.

Here are just a few of Nature Needs Half network’s achievements in 2018 –

1. Digital Earth

This year, National Geographic’s chief scientist, Jonathan Baillie co-authored “Space for Nature which argues the case for achieving 30% of land and ocean protected by 2030, 50% by 2050.

Under the auspices of NNH, that revered institution National Geographic has joined forces with another colossus on the world stage, Google, to devise a failsafe way of getting world leaders on board with those literally life-saving objectives. With NatGeo’s unsurpassable knowledge on the ground and Google’s tech expertise, together they are creating a public-access four-dimensional digital Earth.

“This living rendition of the globe will allow users to monitor the world’s species and ecosystems over time, understand threats to the natural world and realize solutions to help achieve a planet in balance.” – Partners’ press release.

It’s hoped that imaging change across the planet in real time will have a much greater impact on national governments and their citizens than pages of dry statistics. Seeing is believing.

Under the NNH umbrella, NatGeo is also working with the Nature Conservancy, and the Wyss Foundation which has pledged a staggering $1 billion to help meet the 2030 targets. Good news indeed!

2. China

China, that world super-power we most often associate with rapid industrialisation, pollution and environmental degradation, recently made a massively significant u-turn, pronouncing itself in 2015 the ecological civilization of the 21st century¹

Why is this so important? Because:-

China is home to 20% of the world’s population
China is the world’s second largest economy
China’s current and future ecological footprint is enormous
China is in the top 3 most biodiverse countries
China has committed to the most ambitious goals and environmental policies of all the major nations on earth

This year, Nature Needs Half partners collaborated in a peer-reviewed article introducing the half-Earth vision to this country of 1.3 billion people. And again, we’re not just talking academic ink on paper. The article details the practical steps China can take to reach the goal of 50% for Nature in the next 30 year. The message reached more than 50,000 Chinese movers-and-shakers, academics, land managers, and land management professionals.

WILD and the Wilderness Specialist Group of the IUCN have also joined forces with Professor Yang Rui, expert in wilderness protection. “There are few if any professionals in China whose resumé commands the recognition and respect his does, with literally dozens of major planning, policy, and research projects to protect wild nature.” This hugely influential man, both in and outside China, is the recently appointed president of Tsinghua University’s brand new Institute for National Parks, and has wasted no time in putting forward six major suggestions to put wilderness at the heart of the chain of national parks China has in the making.

3. Securing last strongholds of critically endangered species

“Nature Needs Half partner, the Quick Response Biodiversity Fund, with the help of a major grant from the Leonardo DiCaprio Foundation², secured 13 sites around the world for rare and critically endangered species. Many of these sites are the last stronghold for some of Earth’s most unique and vulnerable lifeforms.”

The Half Earth movement is gathering momentum. There is good news. There is hope.

Now, at the turning of the year, NNH partner and conservationist James Brundige throws down this challenge before us –

“The time is now. Nature Needs Half. And Nature needs you!“

What better way to start 2019 than by committing to Saving Half for Nature. Nature will richly reward us.

1 You can be part of this amazing work for the planet by becoming a WILD member here

2 Take the Half-Earth pledge here

3 Sign the Nature Needs Half Declaration here

4 Sign petition for Half for the Animals here

5 Free up more land for wildlife by moving towards a plant-based diet and reducing your ecological footprint. Info @

Forks Over Knives Vegan Society Vegan Outreach PETA UK PETA Viva!

6 Send your political representatives the Grow Green report, or if in the UK contact your MP here about the Grow Green campaign to transition unsustainable livestock farming to plant protein farming. And share with your friends

¹ In 2015 “The [Chinese] Congress clearly stated that China must incorporate the idea of ecological civilization into all aspects of economic, political, cultural, and social progress. Actions and activities relating to China’s geographical space, industrial structures, modes of production and people’s living should all be conducive to conserving resources and protecting the environment so as to create a sound working and living environment for the Chinese people and make contributions to global ecological safety.” UN Environment Our Planet

² “With contributions from scientists and partners around the world, One Earth, an initiative of the Leonardo DiCaprio Foundation (LDF), has developed a bold, new plan to avert a climate crisis and protect our biosphere. Justin Winters, LDF’s Executive Director, explains the three goals humanity needs to achieve by 2050: Transform our energy systems to 100% clean, renewable energy; Protect, connect and restore 50% of our lands and seas; and Shift to regenerative, carbon-negative agriculture globally. At the heart of this effort is a new map of the world called the Global Safety Net, which shows what the world could look like if we achieve these three goals.”

Leonardo Di Caprio Foundation Executive Director Justin Winters on One Earth below