https://www.abc.net.au/news/2022-10-04/federal-government-pledges-30-percent-land-for-conservation/101498000
The federal government will reserve 30 per cent of land for conservation to improve biodiversity and set a goal of no new extinctions in an overhaul of its threatened species action plan.
The new plan, to be outlined by Environment Minister Tanya Plibersek on Tuesday, includes a commitment to protect an additional 50 million hectares of land by the end of the decade.

Fifteen new animal and plant species have also been added to the endangered list primarily due to human activity and in part as a result of the Black Summer bushfires.

Ms Plibersek described Australia as “the mammal-extinction capital of the world” and said previous strategies to save plants, animals and places had failed and must be reconsidered.

*throws a few more points om the approval rating.

Recently I’ve been watching videos and playing around with free downloads for various “evolution simulators” such as The Life Engine or The Bibites. These simulations are somewhat like Conway’s Game of Life, but produce critters with various “physical” attributes, random mutations in offspring, and they have a “brain” that can learn things.
(See here for an explanation of how Life Engine works from the creator).

One of the things that quickly becomes very apparent is that it does not pay to become attached to any particular “species” that evolves in these simulations. Something might emerge in, say, the section in the top left of the picture below (Life Engine – the grey lines have been drawn in by me to create an “environment”) which looks awesome and kick-ass, armored and armed to the teeth, which if funneled to compete against other existing life forms in the simulation (that’s what the central sections are for, 2 species enter, 1 species leaves kind of thing, Thunderdome!) destroys them all, but which if left simply to evolve in and spread out from that top left section are likely to not end up getting very far, to be confined and held back by “lesser species” in the area adjacent to the top left section.

Watching and playing around with these simulations is affecting the way I perceive life on Earth. It is giving me a new perspective on the oft-quoted 99% of all species that have ever existed have become extinct. So many times I’ve spotted a new organism and thought it was going to quickly end up dominating the ecosystem, only for it to fail at doing so for some seemingly minor reason (eg the random dashes at the bottleneck opening in the gray wall – remove them and things happen differently). Or a species has come to dominate and it looks like it will last forever, but then I make a small change to the environment or some unassuming other species appears which quickly out-competes the dominant life. I’m starting to view life on Earth and the evolution that happens to that life more holistically, coming to the view that individual species are not really that important, and that human angst over the loss of any particular species is probably misplaced.

Obviously it would be a bad thing if humans sterilized the planet, but this “no new extinctions” thing seems like a bloody ridiculous goal, and contrary to how stuff actually works. As a concept, it’s more artificial than just allowing evolution to do it’s thing in an environment which includes human activity.

As of February 2022 protected areas cover 1,518,814.69 km2 (586,417.63 sq mi) of Australia’s land area, or about 19.75% of the total land area.

Stop destroying habitat to build ponzi scheme housing estates. Stop bringing hundreds of thousands of new people to country every year.

wookiemeister said:

Stop destroying habitat to build ponzi scheme housing estates. Stop bringing hundreds of thousands of new people to country every year.

Not sure how we deal with immigration, the big polluters and energy users should take responsibility for creating the conditions that others want to leave their homeland and go elsewhere.

Esselte, in abstract you have a reasonable point and it would ridic for instance to have the goal of ending extinctions for say ten thousand years. I think that is a fair goal over the politically relevant short term, say a hundred years or so, and beyond that a reasonable goal would be to have extinction rates similar to the “background “ level it was at before the Quaternary Extinction Event.

Cymek said:

wookiemeister said:

Stop destroying habitat to build ponzi scheme housing estates. Stop bringing hundreds of thousands of new people to country every year.

Not sure how we deal with immigration, the big polluters and energy users should take responsibility for creating the conditions that others want to leave their homeland and go elsewhere.

High immigration drives up power prices, water prices , road taxes, traffic jams

The most we should be taking in every year is 20,000

The cost of these people to the system needs to be examined

No refugees , help these people where they are, cheaper, efficient than expanding the centrelink budget.

esselte said:

Recently I’ve been watching videos and playing around with free downloads for various “evolution simulators” such as The Life Engine or The Bibites. These simulations are somewhat like Conway’s Game of Life, but produce critters with various “physical” attributes, random mutations in offspring, and they have a “brain” that can learn things.
(See here for an explanation of how Life Engine works from the creator).

One of the things that quickly becomes very apparent is that it does not pay to become attached to any particular “species” that evolves in these simulations. Something might emerge in, say, the section in the top left of the picture below (Life Engine – the grey lines have been drawn in by me to create an “environment”) which looks awesome and kick-ass, armored and armed to the teeth, which if funneled to compete against other existing life forms in the simulation (that’s what the central sections are for, 2 species enter, 1 species leaves kind of thing, Thunderdome!) destroys them all, but which if left simply to evolve in and spread out from that top left section are likely to not end up getting very far, to be confined and held back by “lesser species” in the area adjacent to the top left section.

Watching and playing around with these simulations is affecting the way I perceive life on Earth. It is giving me a new perspective on the oft-quoted 99% of all species that have ever existed have become extinct. So many times I’ve spotted a new organism and thought it was going to quickly end up dominating the ecosystem, only for it to fail at doing so for some seemingly minor reason (eg the random dashes at the bottleneck opening in the gray wall – remove them and things happen differently). Or a species has come to dominate and it looks like it will last forever, but then I make a small change to the environment or some unassuming other species appears which quickly out-competes the dominant life. I’m starting to view life on Earth and the evolution that happens to that life more holistically, coming to the view that individual species are not really that important, and that human angst over the loss of any particular species is probably misplaced.

Obviously it would be a bad thing if humans sterilized the planet, but this “no new extinctions” thing seems like a bloody ridiculous goal, and contrary to how stuff actually works. As a concept, it’s more artificial than just allowing evolution to do it’s thing in an environment which includes human activity.

As a game and regards single species you are probably correct, but currently we are dealing with the potential of mass extinctions a far more serious situation, which means depending on the survivors, the diversity of life starts again and to reach anywhere near current diversity would mean many, many millions of years. True life on earth is highly unlikely to disappear, but we should appreciate its diversity and its right to live and not through greed, self-interest and stupidity, none of which are high ideals, bring it all down.

dv said:

https://www.abc.net.au/news/2022-10-04/federal-government-pledges-30-percent-land-for-conservation/101498000
The federal government will reserve 30 per cent of land for conservation to improve biodiversity and set a goal of no new extinctions in an overhaul of its threatened species action plan.
The new plan, to be outlined by Environment Minister Tanya Plibersek on Tuesday, includes a commitment to protect an additional 50 million hectares of land by the end of the decade.

Fifteen new animal and plant species have also been added to the endangered list primarily due to human activity and in part as a result of the Black Summer bushfires.

Ms Plibersek described Australia as “the mammal-extinction capital of the world” and said previous strategies to save plants, animals and places had failed and must be reconsidered.

Ms Plibersek should be prime minister.

However, I just want to say that the number of mammal species extinct in Australia is exactly the same as the number of feral mammal species in Australia. Island biogeography has a way of balancing the books.