Nature Mourns: Our Leaders Are Failing to Act!

Allain Bougrain-Dubourg, the president of the League for the Protection of Birds (LPO) in France, is a prolific author with several notable publications including Letters from Animals to Those Who Treat Them as Beasts (2018, Les Échappés), The Lover’s Dictionary of Birds (2022, Plon), and The Lover’s Dictionary of Wild Life (2024, Plon).

Who still recalls the Caribbean monk seal, the great auk, the tricolored macaw, or the recently extinct slender-billed curlew, all victims of human actions? If we managed without them so far, perhaps their loss seems unimportant to us…

Yet, we owe so much to these other species. How many drugs have been derived from the natural world around us? How many vegetables do we enjoy thanks to pollination? How many mangroves protect our coastlines, how many plants and mollusks purify our water, how many fungi enrich our soils?

Our political leaders are consistently briefed by scientists about the perilous decline of biodiversity and ways to counteract it. But what actions are they taking? Without public engagement, will they shift their stance considering the massive economic interests at stake?

One thing is clear: biodiversity, once harmed due to ignorance, now suffers from neglect. As the impacts of climate change become painfully evident through frequent floods, persistent droughts, and eroding coastlines, these issues increasingly disrupt our daily lives.

What would be the implications for us if species like the European mink, the little bustard, or the Hermann’s tortoise, currently under severe threat, were to disappear? It might seem inconsequential at first glance. However, according to a December 2024 report by the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES), over 40% of the global economy depends on natural services—from recreational sites to forests that heat our homes.

In the past forty years, 800 million birds have vanished from Europe’s skies, primarily due to intensive agriculture and its associated chemical usage, as reported in May 2023. This issue was already being highlighted back in 1962 when American Rachel Carson published Silent Spring. Three years later, Jean Dorst, then president of the French National Museum of Natural History, warned of today’s unacceptable contradictions in his book Before Nature Dies — For Nature to Live.

Biodiversity has become hostage to certain corporate interests: this is exemplified by the Agricultural Orientation Law passed by our legislators on February 20.

The IPBES, often referred to as the biodiversity equivalent of the IPCC, criticizes the “leaders” for their inaction. Scientists also offer resilience strategies, similar to those proposed by the French Office for Biodiversity (OFB).

In summary, not only is it no longer possible to claim ignorance, but also infeasible to pretend we don’t know how to respond. Despite knowing, we often do the opposite of what is required. Here are two examples:

As if that weren’t enough, there’s a troubling trend against science itself. In the United States, the term biodiversity is now officially avoided, while in our own backyard, the voices of scientists, those crucial whistleblowers, are being ignored. Did anyone heed the biologists from the CNRS and their colleagues when they reported the disappearance of numerous field birds in Europe in May 2023?

We are witnessing attempts to erase the guardians of biodiversity (consider the threats to the French Office of Biodiversity), a world becoming a graveyard with nutrient-depleted soils, a devastated ocean, and the reintroduction of neonicotinoids, the killers of pollinators.

Last March, the LPO symbolically declared a period of “Mourning for Nature,” a desperate tribute to the living world. This sentiment has been echoed by numerous groups across France.

That’s why, on April 5, a “Lively March for a Noisy Spring” has been called by the movements Scientists in Rebellion and Extinction Rebellion. In Paris, from the Jardin des Plantes to the Ministry of Health, participants will voice their love for nature and their commitment to its preservation. They will also highlight a critical, often overlooked point: our dominant position obligates us to protect the weaker, our fellow inhabitants of the planet — the animals and plants.