Recent scientific publications affirm the extinction crisis as one of humanity’s most pressing and least attended problems. Because of its sweep and humanity’s disregard, it is being cemented into the future.
But it does not have to be that way. Such a sad and bleak future is not preordained. Restoring vanishing species affirms our ability to craft an alternative future where the extinction crisis has been arrested, where a natural balance has been restored that perpetuates critical ecosystem services and serves as a hedge against the next deadly zoonotic disease and subsequent pandemic. Exercise of such ability allows us to change our longstanding exploitative relationship with Mother Earth, which is buckling under the pressure of unrestrained utilization and persistent disregard. Exercise of such ability gives rise to new relationship with nature, one that is sorely needed, one that is restorative, caring, wholly practical, and absolutely essential.
The work of the Turner Endangered Species Fund advances just such a relationship. Belief in our work, and the work itself, has never mattered more than it does today, tomorrow, and beyond. In the beyond of 2021 and later years we intend to develop a robust effort to benefit the critically endangered American burying beetle that maintains an uncertain toe hold at Ted’s Spikebox Ranch in Nebraska.