Two thought leaders in biodiversity are dead. Conservation biologist Thomas E. Lovejoy died on Saturday, as announced by George Mason University, where Lovejoy headed the Institute for a Sustainable Earth, and the Amazon Biodiversity Center he founded.
Lovejoy, who is credited with spreading the term "biodiversity", was 80 years old.
The well-known US biologist and evolutionary researcher Edward O. Wilson also died on Sunday at the age of 92 in the US state of Massachusetts, as his foundation announced on Monday.
The scientist, also known as "Darwin's natural heritage", first made a name for himself as an ant researcher, but then also examined the social behavior of birds, mammals and humans.
The longtime professor at the elite Harvard University gave its name to a scientific discipline in 1975 with his work »Social Biology«.
His thesis, put forward in the last chapter, that there is a close connection between human behavior and genetics was controversial.
Critics saw racism, sexism and fascism in it - because it can be concluded from his theory that inequality is natural.
Using data on multiple animal species, Wilson argued that there was a genetic basis for social behaviors from warfare to selflessness - an idea that contradicted the prevailing view that cultural and environmental factors determine human behavior.
In 1978 members of an anti-racist student group poured him a bucket of ice water when he was about to give a lecture at a scientific conference.
Wilson later stated that the severity of the reaction had frightened him and made him refrain from public speaking for a period.
"I thought my career was going up in flames," he said.
In his opinion, genes did not determine all human behavior at all, but rather "roughly 10 percent".
The earth as a largely unexplored planet
In later years, Wilson turned more to environmental protection, sat on the advisory boards of groups such as the Nature Conservancy and warned of the destruction of biodiversity by humans. Wilson was also nicknamed "the ant man". As a youth in Alabama, he was the first to identify fire ants that had come to the United States on ships from South America. After his parents' divorce when Wilson was seven, and further strokes of fate such as the partial loss of his eyesight in a fishing accident and then a partial loss of his hearing, the scientist described nature as "my companion of choice."
Wilson saw his detailed description of the behavior of ants using microscopic images as an indicator of the state of the environment - and as a “look into the eye of creation”: “You are seeing something that could be millions of years old and no one has seen it before you . "
The biologist wrote hundreds of specialist articles and more than 30 books in the course of his scientific career. For two of them - "Biology as Fate" and "The Ants" - he was awarded the renowned Pulitzer Prize. In 1990 he received the Crafoord Prize, the highest honor in the discipline not covered by the Nobel Prizes, for his research "on biodiversity and community dynamics on islands". In the 2000s, Wilson campaigned for science and religion to work together to preserve creation. In joint appeals with him, leaders of the evangelical churches also spoke out in favor of the fight against the climate crisis.
"The variety of life on earth is far greater than even most biologists perceive," said Wilson in 1993. Not even a tenth of the species is scientifically determined.
Therefore one could still consider the earth as a "largely unexplored planet".
Wilson said "perhaps better than anyone else what it means to be human," said David Prend, Chairman of the Board of Trustees of the EO Wilson Biodiversity Foundation.
Thomas Lovejoy, Warner Before Species Extinction
Biodiversity as an expression of the abundance of life forms on earth was spread in the late 1970s by fellow biologist Thomas Lovejoy.
The term became the title of a researcher’s book in 1980 and later became one of the most important biological topics in the age of climate change.
As a leading researcher into extinction of species, Lovejoy discovered that habitat destruction, pollution, and global warming are wiping out animal and plant species around the world. Lovejoy issued the first warning about species extinction in 1980 in a report to US President James Carter: By 2020, 10 to 20 percent of species would be lost. How exactly this prediction was true can hardly be verified, since only some of the life forms have been scientifically recorded. Of these, however, 0.01 to 0.1 percent are declared extinct annually. The basic message of a dramatic biodiversity crisis is scientific consensus.
Lovejoy called for forests to be reforested to stimulate the regrowth of native plants and animals.
He also campaigned for the protection of large areas of water and land.
Lovejoy also made a significant contribution to the latest status report on the Amazon for the climate conference in Glasgow.
His research brought him to the Amazon in the 1960s, where he became a passionate defender of tropical rainforests.
He helped protect and restore endangered forest areas in a project in Brazil.
He later built his research station "Camp 41" north of the Amazon metropolis of Manaus.
Several politicians and celebrities visited Lovejoy there.
Optimist in hammocks and river bathing spots
The actor Tom Cruise named him "Indy" after Indiana Jones because he made the original jungle a second home next to a historic forest hut in Virginia with hammocks and natural river bathing areas. The former US Senator and President of the United Nations Foundation, Tim Wirth, reported on joint expeditions through the Arctic, to the South Pole, into the Amazon region or by kayak through the Grand Canyon. According to Lovejoy, he made his dream of a researcher life in the wild come true. As the son of a New York insurance manager, he had attended boarding school with its own zoo.
The National Geographic Society gave Lovejoy a scholarship in 1971 to study the birds of the Amazon rainforest. Over the next five decades, the biologist took on various roles in the US foundation. National Geographic boss Jill Tiefenthaler wrote in a blog entry about "Tom as an extraordinary scientist, teacher, consultant and never yielding champion for our planet".
Lovejoy was also involved in creating the "Nature" program for US public television, with impressive footage from ecosystems around the world. When the series first launched in 1982, the biologist was working for the World Wildlife Fund. He also worked at the Smithsonian Institution, the World Bank and as a scientific and environmental advisor to various US presidents. The idea of converting national debt into an obligation to protect nature goes back to him.
According to the Washington Post, Lovejoy retained unshakable optimism despite all the warnings of environmental disasters - including when he and his Brazilian colleague Carlos Nobre identified a tipping point in 2019 at which the destruction of the Amazon rainforest threatened to accelerate irreversibly.
The earth's lungs "are teetering on the verge of functional destruction - and so are we," wrote the two of them.
"In that case, it won't happen suddenly, and that's good news," Lovejoy told the newspaper.
"That allows us to do something about it."
ak / AP / AFP