Will you join us to address the Biodiversity Crisis?
Our Organizing Mission
|
The Western New York Environmental Alliance is prepared to step into one of the most critical environmental issues of our time – the biodiversity crisis. Our planet Earth is experiencing an extinction event that is higher than any time in human history. These extinctions are caused by ongoing human activity that results in habitat loss, distribution of invasive species, overexploitation of some species, pollution and climate change associated with global warming. Every place on earth is impacted, including our region. All of us are called to take action to protect functioning and regenerating ecosystems of native and endemic flora and fauna in all habitats, leading to greater social, economic, environmental and species justice. To that end, WNYEA proudly announces our commitment to support, facilitate and assist in biodiversity endeavors across the WNY and Great Lakes region for all our member organizations in a DECADE OF BIODIVERSITY.
We proclaim the critical importance of biodiversity and will work to educate the public, elected officials and ancillary organizations to include this broader ecological perspective in their work and decisions and to work for policy and legal frameworks that encode the protection of ecological systems as a priority. We must find ways to change the human activities that destroy healthy, functioning, diverse ecosystems in every locale and to restore those that have been damaged. |
We must learn, as a culture, to appreciate the gifts of biologically diverse systems that:
|
Members of the WNY Environmental Alliance are already engaged in many activities related to the protection, restoration, and management of biodiversity in our regional land and waters. We will facilitate and support organizational and partnership efforts to protect, restore and maintain healthy soil, water, wildlife, and people.
We are reaching out to partners to identify their ongoing biodiversity efforts to form ‘conversation tables’ around common interests, leading to greater public awareness and impactful collaborations.
For example, we are bringing together common interests around bird friendly programs and policies such as “Lights Out;” and promoting ecologically grounded and food productive urban places through participation and implementation of strategies in Biophilic Cities.
We hope you will join us!!
We are reaching out to partners to identify their ongoing biodiversity efforts to form ‘conversation tables’ around common interests, leading to greater public awareness and impactful collaborations.
For example, we are bringing together common interests around bird friendly programs and policies such as “Lights Out;” and promoting ecologically grounded and food productive urban places through participation and implementation of strategies in Biophilic Cities.
We hope you will join us!!
One of our actions: 30 x 30
Climate change will impact life on earth including human life, for generations.
30 x 30 is an effort to address Earth’s loss of life sustaining habitat, including forests, meadows, and wetlands, by identifying 30% of Earth’s ecologically productive areas that can be conserved as by the year 3030.
This is an ambitious goal that has been adopted as U.S. Policy, and New York State Policy. This campaign is about introducing 30 x 30 to Western New York regional and local community and government organizations, promoting policies, and when appropriate, developing ordinances that benefit ecologically productive spaces in our communities.
According to Doug Tallamy, acclaimed author and ecology activist, founder of Homegrown National Park:
Climate change will impact life on earth including human life, for generations.
30 x 30 is an effort to address Earth’s loss of life sustaining habitat, including forests, meadows, and wetlands, by identifying 30% of Earth’s ecologically productive areas that can be conserved as by the year 3030.
This is an ambitious goal that has been adopted as U.S. Policy, and New York State Policy. This campaign is about introducing 30 x 30 to Western New York regional and local community and government organizations, promoting policies, and when appropriate, developing ordinances that benefit ecologically productive spaces in our communities.
According to Doug Tallamy, acclaimed author and ecology activist, founder of Homegrown National Park:
“We have turned 54% of the lower 48 states into a matrix of cities, suburbs, roads, airports, power and pipelines, shopping centers, golf courses, infrastructure, and isolated habitat fragments, with 41% more of the U.S. into various forms of agriculture. That’s right: we humans have taken 95% of the natural world and made it unnatural. But does this matter? Are there consequences to using almost all of our land to meet human needs without considering the needs of other species? Absolutely, both for biodiversity and for us. Our fellow creatures need food and shelter to survive and reproduce, and we need robust populations of our fellow creatures because they are what run the ecosystems on which we all depend. Although we like nature, we have always felt apart from it; humans are here and nature is someplace else. The idea that we could coexist in the same place at the same time has never been part of the vast Western or Asian cultures.”
We Have Taken It All- More From Doug Tallamy
The population of the U.S., now over 330 million people, has more than doubled since most of us were kids, and it continues to grow by 4800 people each day. All of those additional souls, together with cheap gas, our love affair with the car, and our quest to own ever larger homes, have fueled unprecedented development that continues to sprawl over 2 million additional acres per year (the size of Yellowstone National Park). The Chesapeake Bay watershed has lost 100 acres of forest each day since 1985. We have connected all of our developments with 4 million miles of roads, and their combined paved surface is nearly five times the size of New Jersey. Somewhere along the way we decided to convert most of our living and working spaces into huge expanses of lawn. So far, we have planted over 62,500 square miles -some 40 million acres - in lawn. Each weekend we mow an area the size of New England to within one inch and then congratulate ourselves on a job well done. And it’s not as though those little woodlots and “open spaces” we have not paved or manicured are pristine. Nearly all are second-growth forests that have been overtaken by invasive Asian plants like autumn olive, multiflora rose, Oriental bittersweet, porcelainberry, buckthorn, privet, and bush honeysuckle. To nature lovers, these are horrifying statistics. I stress them so that we can clearly understand the challenge before us. We have turned 54% of the lower 48 states into a matrix of cities, suburbs, roads, airports, power and pipelines, shopping centers, golf courses, infrastructure, and isolated habitat fragments, with 41% more of the U.S. into various forms of agriculture. That’s right: we humans have taken 95% of the natural world and made it unnatural. But does this matter? Are there consequences to using almost all of our land to meet human needs without considering the needs of other species? Absolutely, both for biodiversity and for us. Our fellow creatures need food and shelter to survive and reproduce, and we need robust populations of our fellow creatures because they are what run the ecosystems on which we all depend. Although we like nature, we have always felt apart from it; humans are here and nature is someplace else. The idea that we could coexist in the same place at the same time has never been part of the vast Western or Asian cultures.
The population of the U.S., now over 330 million people, has more than doubled since most of us were kids, and it continues to grow by 4800 people each day. All of those additional souls, together with cheap gas, our love affair with the car, and our quest to own ever larger homes, have fueled unprecedented development that continues to sprawl over 2 million additional acres per year (the size of Yellowstone National Park). The Chesapeake Bay watershed has lost 100 acres of forest each day since 1985. We have connected all of our developments with 4 million miles of roads, and their combined paved surface is nearly five times the size of New Jersey. Somewhere along the way we decided to convert most of our living and working spaces into huge expanses of lawn. So far, we have planted over 62,500 square miles -some 40 million acres - in lawn. Each weekend we mow an area the size of New England to within one inch and then congratulate ourselves on a job well done. And it’s not as though those little woodlots and “open spaces” we have not paved or manicured are pristine. Nearly all are second-growth forests that have been overtaken by invasive Asian plants like autumn olive, multiflora rose, Oriental bittersweet, porcelainberry, buckthorn, privet, and bush honeysuckle. To nature lovers, these are horrifying statistics. I stress them so that we can clearly understand the challenge before us. We have turned 54% of the lower 48 states into a matrix of cities, suburbs, roads, airports, power and pipelines, shopping centers, golf courses, infrastructure, and isolated habitat fragments, with 41% more of the U.S. into various forms of agriculture. That’s right: we humans have taken 95% of the natural world and made it unnatural. But does this matter? Are there consequences to using almost all of our land to meet human needs without considering the needs of other species? Absolutely, both for biodiversity and for us. Our fellow creatures need food and shelter to survive and reproduce, and we need robust populations of our fellow creatures because they are what run the ecosystems on which we all depend. Although we like nature, we have always felt apart from it; humans are here and nature is someplace else. The idea that we could coexist in the same place at the same time has never been part of the vast Western or Asian cultures.
Our 30x30 Kick-Off Meeting held Saturday, November 11, 2023
The Importance of Biodiversity
Biodiversity is what makes our planet ecologically healthy and supportive of life, including human life. We have lost most of our global and local biodiversity. For most of us, hearing such numbers triggers a passing sadness, but few people feelpersonally threatened by the loss of biodiversity. Here’s why you should.Biodiversity losses are a clear sign that our own life-support systems are failing. The ecosystems that determine the earth’s ability to support us are run by the plantsand animals around us. It is plants that generate oxygen and clean water, that createtopsoil out of rock, and that buffer extreme weather events like droughts and floods. It is insect decomposers that drive the nutrient cycles on earth, allowing each new generation of plants and animals to exist. It is pollinators that are essential to the continued existence of 80 % of all plants and 90% of all flowering plants, and it is birds and mammals that disperse the seeds of those plants and provide them with pest control services.
And now, with human-induced climate change threatening the planet, it is plants that will suck much of that excess carbon out of the air, build their tissues with it, and pump the surplus into the soil for long-term storage - if we would only put them back into our landscapes. Humans cannot live as the only species on this planet because it is other species that create the ecosystem services essential to us. Every time we force a species to extinction, we are encouraging our own demise. Despite the disdain with which we have treated it in the past, biodiversity is not optional.
ACTION AGENDA
The Western New York Environmental Alliance is hosting a series of actions to inform and engage community organizations, government agencies and representatives, and individuals, toward developing both awareness of the need to promote 30 x 30, and to develop actionable strategies for Western New York communities to adopt implementable strategies to preserve 30% of ecologically productive lands and waters by the yer 3030. One of our initial goals is to identify what areas should be considered as ecologically productive and then to identify to protect these valuable life supporting areas.
We will do this by creating and hosting an inclusive and collaborative Leadership Council/and Steering Committee.
Hosting regular meetings and strategy sessions
Introducing Policy Initiatives and where appropriate and feasible,
Promoting specific ordinances such as native plant and tree guidelines and ordinances; Landscaping and Design Ordinances, and working toward creating Nature Friendly communities.
Biodiversity is what makes our planet ecologically healthy and supportive of life, including human life. We have lost most of our global and local biodiversity. For most of us, hearing such numbers triggers a passing sadness, but few people feelpersonally threatened by the loss of biodiversity. Here’s why you should.Biodiversity losses are a clear sign that our own life-support systems are failing. The ecosystems that determine the earth’s ability to support us are run by the plantsand animals around us. It is plants that generate oxygen and clean water, that createtopsoil out of rock, and that buffer extreme weather events like droughts and floods. It is insect decomposers that drive the nutrient cycles on earth, allowing each new generation of plants and animals to exist. It is pollinators that are essential to the continued existence of 80 % of all plants and 90% of all flowering plants, and it is birds and mammals that disperse the seeds of those plants and provide them with pest control services.
And now, with human-induced climate change threatening the planet, it is plants that will suck much of that excess carbon out of the air, build their tissues with it, and pump the surplus into the soil for long-term storage - if we would only put them back into our landscapes. Humans cannot live as the only species on this planet because it is other species that create the ecosystem services essential to us. Every time we force a species to extinction, we are encouraging our own demise. Despite the disdain with which we have treated it in the past, biodiversity is not optional.
ACTION AGENDA
The Western New York Environmental Alliance is hosting a series of actions to inform and engage community organizations, government agencies and representatives, and individuals, toward developing both awareness of the need to promote 30 x 30, and to develop actionable strategies for Western New York communities to adopt implementable strategies to preserve 30% of ecologically productive lands and waters by the yer 3030. One of our initial goals is to identify what areas should be considered as ecologically productive and then to identify to protect these valuable life supporting areas.
We will do this by creating and hosting an inclusive and collaborative Leadership Council/and Steering Committee.
Hosting regular meetings and strategy sessions
Introducing Policy Initiatives and where appropriate and feasible,
Promoting specific ordinances such as native plant and tree guidelines and ordinances; Landscaping and Design Ordinances, and working toward creating Nature Friendly communities.
Additional Resources
National Resources Defense Council (NRDC)
Biden Administration Lays Out 30 x 30 Vision to Conserve Nature
Doug Tallamy:
Homegrown National Park Homepage
We Have Taken It
Author and Conservation Activist Tony Hiss
Rescuing the Planet
Western New York Land Conservancy Western New York Wildways Project
Land Trust Alliance Our Commitment to 30 x 30
The Nature Conservancy How Do We Enhance Area-Based Conservation?
National Resources Defense Council (NRDC)
Biden Administration Lays Out 30 x 30 Vision to Conserve Nature
Doug Tallamy:
Homegrown National Park Homepage
We Have Taken It
Author and Conservation Activist Tony Hiss
Rescuing the Planet
Western New York Land Conservancy Western New York Wildways Project
Land Trust Alliance Our Commitment to 30 x 30
The Nature Conservancy How Do We Enhance Area-Based Conservation?