Protecting animals and their natural habitats is key to our survival and solving the climate crisis—but also, what’s a world without happy, thriving capybaras? Or frogs? Or sloths? Getting curious about the creatures around you is the first step to protecting them—which is key, because they kinda really need our help right now. But hey, posting about them might also score you rabid new fans. So head outside and start searching for your friendly neighborhood celeb.
Featured Creators
Biodiversity isn’t just beauty, splendor and variety – although it is all these things. Biodiversity is the complex web on which human existence depends.
Inger Andersen, Executive Director, United Nations Environment Programme
@mndiaye_97’s signature deadpan monologue about drunken bees makes the case for protecting them as the climate warms.
@BraveWilderness’ vid about getting spiked by an echidna in Western Australia invites audiences to consider the animals living in their own backyards.
From the United Nations: What's the deal with biodiversity?
What’s biodiversity?
Biodiversity is the variety of life on Earth, in all its forms, from moss and bacteria to wolves and whales to ecosystems such as forests or coral reefs. We basically depend on this web of life for everything we need: food, water, medicine, a stable climate, economic growth, among others.
Biodiversity
climate
Human land use and our changing climate are the biggest threats to biodiversity today. The land and ocean naturally absorb more than half of all carbon emissions—but they’re being severely degraded. Up to one million species are threatened with extinction. Irreplaceable ecosystems like the Amazon rainforest are turning from carbon sinks into carbon sources due to deforestation.
Restoration and rewilding
Though global biodiversity is severely threatened, it’s also one of our best weapons in the climate fight1. Rewilding—conserving and restoring natural spaces and their wildlife on land and sea—is a powerful solution to limiting carbon emissions and adapting to a changing climate. Restoring nature could contribute to about ⅓ of greenhouse gas emissions reductions needed by 2030. TL;DR: save the animals, save ourselves.
Lifting up Indigenous voices
Indigenous Peoples make up 6% of the global population, but conserve over 80% of biodiversity worldwide. Their identities, cultures, spirituality, and life ways are inextricably linked to land stewardship and biodiversity—so it is essential to center Indigenous wisdom at the heart of restoration and rewilding projects2.
Rewilding can happen right in your own backyard—whether you live in the city, suburbs or countryside.
Urban
Dutch cities have managed to stabilize urban bee populations in recent years, a 2021 study found, following decades of declines. Small, urban pockets of biodiversity, like bee bus stops, were among their solutions.
@yusseff.rafik reports on the UK's bison rewilding efforts for BBC Earth.
We're not going to transform the world with our backyard, but we can transform the world in our backyard. We can plant plants like milkweed that are hospitable to butterflies that are endangered. We can make our parks in cities a bit more hospitable. We can make our nature reserves more protective. Underneath all of these values is this notion of Indigenous people that we are acting respectfully in partnership with our kin.
1.
IPCC-AR6,C.3.6 Maintaining the resilience of biodiversity and ecosystem services at a global scale depends on effective and equitable conservation of approximately 30% to 50% of Earth’s land, freshwater and ocean areas, including currently near natural ecosystems (high confidence). Conservation, protection and restoration of terrestrial, freshwater, coastal and ocean ecosystems, together with targeted management to adapt to unavoidable impacts of climate change reduces the vulnerability of biodiversity and ecosystem services to climate change (high confidence), reduces coastal erosion and flooding (high confidence), and could increase carbon uptake and storage if global warming is limited (medium confidence). Rebuilding overexploited or depleted fisheries reduces negative climate change impacts on fisheries (medium confidence) and supports food security, biodiversity, human health and well-being (high confidence). Land restoration contributes to climate change mitigation and adaptation with synergies via enhanced ecosystem services and with economically positive returns and co-benefits for poverty reduction and improved livelihoods (high confidence). Cooperation, and inclusive decision making, with Indigenous Peoples and local communities, as well as recognition of inherent rights of Indigenous Peoples, is integral to successful adaptation and mitigation across forests and other ecosystems (high confidence). {4.5.4, 4.6} (Figure SPM.7)
Back
2.
IPCC-AR6, C.3.6 Cooperation, and inclusive decision making, with Indigenous Peoples and local communities, as well as recognition of inherent rights of Indigenous Peoples, is integral to successful adaptation and mitigation across forests and other ecosystems (high confidence).
Back
