According to the latest UN Report, over a million species will go extinct in a few decades. The term “ecosystem services” is often used to describe the benefits that we receive from the natural world that would otherwise cost millions such as wetlands preventing floods or bees and bats pollinating our food crops. The lowly toad gobbles up insects that might otherwise infect our food crops or cause disease. The pieces of nature fit together in so many ways that we still don’t totally fathom. Appeals often inform us that certain species are endangered - usually due to habitat loss, but many times if they are in tropical forests or arctic tundra, we feel it is beyond our control. However, now with the acceleration of the effects of climate change, there is no way we can NOT be involved in acting either for the good or deterioration of the natural world around us.

Even just focusing on keeping the common species common is important and within our control: The robin, blue jay and woodpecker as well as the opossum, raccoon and rabbit. How sad to think that they may be absent from children’s books or field guides of the future. Every piece of habitat destroyed to accommodate our ever-growing need for more warehouses and malls may hasten this outcome. Some call it “the death by a thousand cuts”. Unless we can learn to make our backyards nature-friendly and work as a community to protect open space and our watersheds, we are doomed.