Page 175 - Mapping the Nation: Taking Climate Action

hope to save the immensity of life-forms that compose it." In addition to reducing the human footprint, Wilson also called for a deeper understanding of ourselves and the rest of life on our planet. The E. O. Wilson Biodiversity Foundation's Half-Earth Project, with Jetz as its scientific director, aims to tackle both of Wilson's objectives. This global biodiversity conservation project has set out to quantify habitats and the geographic distribution of species— putting both on the shared open Half-Earth Project Map. The effort also looks at how land-cover change and climate change affect habitats and their viability to support a variety of species. The goal is to support the right decisions and investments to curtail the current mass extinction. "When you lose species, you lose important functions and services," Jetz adds. "At some point, the key functioning—the intactness and integrity of the ecosystem—isn't there anymore because too many species have been lost." As Wilson put it in Half-Earth, "People understand and prefer goals. They need a victory, not just news that progress is being made. It is human nature to yearn for finality, something achieved by which their anxieties and fears are put to rest." Birds Provide Proof of Precariousness There is perhaps nothing more troubling than losing a species forever, which is what has happened—again—with this announcement from US wildlife officials. When we lose The Half-Earth Project Map was developed by the Map of Life Project at Yale University's Center for Biodiversity and Global Change with support from the E. O. Wilson Biodiversity Foundation, the science and technology company Vizzuality, and Esri. a species, there is often a disturbing ripple effect. Jetz, for example, points to the endangered oilbird in South America, the only nocturnal flying fruit-eating bird in the world. It serves as a major seed disperser in the forest, and if it were to be lost forever, we would likely see changes in forest structure. Birds became Jetz's obsession as a teenager, and as an undergraduate student, he started using GIS technology to map and analyze their distribution. He went on to create the first global map of bird species during his graduate work. "I've always been fascinated by maps, and then I got really fascinated by species and biodiversity and how environmental gradients change species composition," Jetz said. "There's a lot of information about birds, and it's a reasonably small species group, with roughly 10,000 species globally. It was the first species where it was possible to grapple with issues of global biodiversity and the implications for conservation science." 174 Biodiversity