The animals we humans don’t eat are evidently essential to reducing carbon emissions. A new study by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), states that restoring far ranging populations of wolves and beavers will help our warming planet. Beaver ponds create healthy wetlands which act as sponges mitigating flooding. And wolves will eat the deer and elk populations that munch on new growth.
The IPCC report also incorporated studies of the ocean, looking at the twilight zone where mesopelagic fish life, swim up to eat phytoplankton and then return to deeper waters, dropping CO2 to the ocean floor. Any loss in biological diversity affects us all.
Especially in the relatively populated east where we live, the restoration of the natural balance of nature is important, whether it’s protecting the Pinelands or the woods in Maine from greedy developers. We need the expanses of the natural world with the full diversity of life that God created if we hope to survive.
Prayer for the Day
In the story made of dawn awaken in us a new spirit, O God,
Restoring our tired arms and legs, as well as our tired souls;
Open our eyes and ears, and our minds to your beauty,
Granting us a renewed awareness of the world around us.
Heal us with your grace, O Lord, when we reach the place of evening light,
So that when the day passes into night, we feel the comfort of your Presence
In the name of the One who shares your Presence with us,
Even Christ Jesus our Lord, Amen.
Thoughts for the Day
The value of biodiversity is that it makes our ecosystems more resilient, which is a prerequisite for stable societies; its wanton destruction is akin to setting fire to our lifeboat.
- Johan Rockström. Swedish scientist, Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact
Addressing the climate and biodiversity crises requires us to radically change our economic models, moving away from economic growth as the over-riding measure of progress, and moving instead to improving health and well-being for people and nature. That means a different economic model moving us to a sustainable economy.
- Caroline Lucas, British MP, Green Party
And the Lord answered Job: Who has let the wild ass go free?
Who has loosed the bonds of the swift ass, to which I have given the steppe as home;
The salt land for its dwelling place? ….
For the mountains yield food for it, where all the wild animals play.
Jon 40: 5-6, 20