Geography Reference
In-Depth Information
unimpressed by us. In our presence, it simply grazed in peace. Northward,
beyond the reserve, where we had spent the past two weeks, no tapirs exist.
Even the expectation of seeing one has vanished. The tapir, a classic avoider,
absolutely requires reserves. Some of us humans also need reserves, without
which our muscles soften, our minds dull, and our souls lose a bit of hope.
Identifying, designing, and protecting reserves are basic practices in the
craft of conservation science. The optimal number, size, shape, connection,
composition, and location of reserves are debated and modeled; but i nally,
they are set aside through purchase, easement, or government action. In this
way, somewhere between 10 percent and 15 percent of Earth's land has been
reserved, though less than 6 percent is strictly protected for conservation pur-
poses. Most reserves are in places where humans have little at stake—high
mountains and lands too rocky to till. Some are in biologically diverse areas,
such as the Amazon River of Brazil or the beaches and mountains of Costa
Rica, a country that has reserved nearly a third of its landmass for nature—
and the human economy that it supports. Reserves in productive shallow
oceans are especially rare; only about 1.5 percent of coastal marine areas are
protected.
Isolating much of Earth's biological diversity from our destructive ways
through a system of reserves is a challenging possibility. Expanding, monitor-
ing, and compensating those displaced by a global system of protected re-
serves that covers 15 percent of Earth's most diverse land would cost about
$300 billion per year. That is a far cry from the $6 billion per year the world
currently invests in protecting existing reserves, but given that there are now
nearly eight billion of us and likely to be ten billion by 2050, the price seems
af ordable. For about forty dollars a head, we could safeguard the most di-
verse lands on Earth. This fee would require substantial and creative collab-
orative public and private investment, most notably a signii cant l ow of
funding from the wealthy north to the biologically diverse south. That many
of the world's most biologically diverse “hotspots” also include large urban
