Today my class went to a lecture on large-scale conservation efforts, hoping that we could find parallels between conservation on Earth and terraforming on other planets. Unfortunately, the lecture was primarily about gathering supporters and networking to help kick start various large-scale projects. The speaker, knowledgeable as he was did not really discuss rebuilding ecosystems as he did discuss protecting those that already exist.
Despite this, the lecture was still interesting to me, and there were still a few ideas put out that could carry over to terraforming. One of these ideas was the percent of land that must remain preserved for wildlife in order to sustain all of Earth’s current ecosystems. While the speaker said that politicians typically quote 12% as the upper limit, most scientists put the number much higher, many are closer to 35% and some are higher still. This relates to terraforming because in order to successfully and permanently terraform you need to create a self-sustaining ecosystem, and to ensure that the ecosystem in self-sustaining you must make sure that there is enough space.
Though they do not relate to our topic of space, the rest of the lecture was interesting nonetheless. Of all the conservation projects proposed, the presenter seemed most excited about the “Spine of the Continent” proposal. This proposal would conserve an area stretching from Yellowstone north through Glacier and well into Canada. This project would protect tens of millions of acres of land, ensuring that species such as the Grizzly Bear and Bison have ample area to graze and live free from human disruption. Other projects include the conservation of the Pacific Northwest, and British Colombia, the vast central boreal forests of Canada and the Eastern coast of Canada.
While the majority of this lecture did not directly relate to terraforming, by learning more about the ecosystems of Earth we can better adapt them to other planets. If there was one thing that I took away from this, it was that managing a planet is still beyond our grasp. Only once we have successfully avoided environmental disaster on Earth should we attempt to control life elsewhere.
