Around the globe, forward-thinking individuals are acting now to protect our plant and animal life against the ravages of economic development.

Nature is under threat as never before. Our globalised economy runs on an exponential growth basis but operates within a natural environment where growth is steady and cyclical; the two have long had a fraught relationship.

Battlefield Earth

Flora

Old-growth forests in numerous countries are under threat from industries such as mining, oil extraction and industrial logging. In the lowlands of Malaysia and Indonesia, rainforest continues to be cleared for palm oil plantations while soya is replacing trees in the Brazilian Amazon.

Negative human impacts — exacerbated by overpopulation, poverty, desertification and war — sometimes run unchecked in developing countries. Meanwhile, road building opens up inaccessible forest to impoverished settlers who often practise unsustainable “slash-and-burn” agriculture.

A few years ago, Australia was placed fifth in a world league table of landclearing countries, behind Brazil, Zambia, Indonesia and Sudan. Since then, clearing practices have been significantly reined in following the introduction of controls in Queensland, the state where most of the destruction was taking place.

Today, the landclearing issue still hasn’t disappeared and environment groups such as The Wilderness Society are concerned the NSW government is failing to tackle illegal clearing activities in the west of the state.

Fauna

Species extinctions are occurring as a result of these activities but nobody knows for certain how many are being wiped out. When rainforest habitats are disturbed, it’s inevitable and tragic that some species unknown to science are among those vanishing forever.

The Washington-based World Resources Institute estimates that, on average, tropical deforestation is responsible for a hundred extinctions every day.

Of all countries, Australia (since European settlement) has the worst record for pushing its native mammals over the brink. The primary causes are introduced predators, overgrazing and agricultural and forestry practices, especially clearfelling.

Although the future extent of climate change during the remainder of this century is difficult to predict, many fear that over the coming decades global warming will precipitate a further wave of Australian extinctions. It’s anticipated that wildlife populations will come under stress due to increased temperatures and some will have no suitable habitat to migrate to.

Eco-philanthropy

Lobbying governments to turn tracts of wilderness and other high conservation value areas into national parks is the favoured strategy of most environmentalists.

However, a number of philanthropic trusts, charities and wealthy individuals are skirting around the messy world of politics to protect such areas by buying them outright.

For poorer nations, nominal protection in a government reserve does not always translate into reality; pressure to meet debt repayments may push cash-strapped governments to open up protected areas to destructive industries. Private ownership provides stronger protection than many governments can offer.

Doug Tompkins’ Chilean vision

Although eco-philanthropy died down for a while in the US, in recent times it’s been revived by the efforts of visionary individuals such as Doug Tompkins who, together with his ex-wife Susie, launched the clothing company Esprit back in the 1960s.

By 1990, having reached middle age and with a newfound affinity towards ecology, he decided to sell his half-share in the corporation for an estimated US$125 million (about A$170 million) and turn his back on the world of consumerism in favour of Chile’s southern Patagonian region.

Near the small coastal city of Puerto Montt lies some of the world’s last remaining old-growth temperate rainforest. Concerned by its lack of protection, Tomkins, during the early- to mid-1990s, purchased several adjoining ranches, mostly from absentee European landholders. Today these holdings have been amalgamated into what’s now known as the Pumalin Preserve, named after the pumas that roam this vast area.