In 1985, one of the worldâs greatest scientists rang the alarm. After a career in biology, Edward O Wilson was convinced that Earth was being stripped of its variety of life. Scientists hadnât even counted all the species sharing the planet, yet they were already disappearing fast. In a paper soon to become seminal, he set out the looming catastrophe.
The chopping down of tropical rainforests meant that, within a century, about 12% of all bird species in the Amazon basin would be lost for ever. This was a mass extinction â âthe most extreme for 65 million yearsâ. Titled The Biological Diversity Crisis, his essay helped give birth to a shorthand: biodiversity. This new discipline began from the premise that all species matter â indeed, that when one dies out they all suffer.
An expert on the unphotogenic ant, Wilson wryly acknowledged âthe…
