At Paint Rock, we’re launching E.O. Wilson’s moonshot
On Half Earth Day last week, E.O. Wilson gave the world its marching orders, the same marching orders he gave the Paint Rock Forest Research Center when he visited and helped us conceptualize it.
As he told David Attenborough during the Half Earth Day Plenary session, we need to do more than a few feel good nature projects, faced as we are with a triple apocalypse of climate change, freshwater loss and biodiversity collapse. We need a moonshot, he says. That’s the Half Earth vision, the idea that if we’re going to make this planet sustainable, safe and comfortable for people, we need to give half of it to nature.
That may seem like a monumental task, but because of Ed’s influence, we’ve made Paint Rock a centerpiece of that Half Earth vision. Our research is designed to identify and understand all species and their interactions, from the genetic level through the entire community. If you thjink we already understand the important species, you’re mistaken: Ed estimates some 80 percent of species have yet to be described. We’re demonstrating that at Paint Rock, where we’re already uncovering key species that have been hiding in plain sight, waiting for researchers to more carefully assess what holds our world together.
And that research, in turn, will play a critical role in how we implement the Half Earth vision – first in Paint Rock Valley, where more than half the broadleaf forests are already “given to nature;” then through the Southern Cumberlands, with its millions of acres of mostly intact forest systems; and then around the country and the globe, sharing what we’ve learned and demonstrated. Yes, there are big gaps in knowledge and conservation we must fill. We’re struggling to restore our lost grassland savanna forests; we know that restoring devastated bottomland forests, canebrakes and meadows requires that we learn how to better address human needs in those places.
But Paint Rock was designed to address Ed’s moonshot. You want to hear more about it? Check out these Links