“It's a complicated issue. I think a lot of those bird disappearances come from the fact that we have massively intensified our agriculture. Large areas of North America and Europe are now under intense agriculture. They are sprayed with a whole variety of pesticides, which I think is also responsible for the fact that many insects have disappeared, so species that depend on farmland have clearly declined dramatically, but it isn't all birds and there is a piece of this complicated story that involves water birds. Herons and egrets and ducks. Those species both in North America and Europe, are now much more common than they were 30, or 40 years ago. That comes from active conservation of protecting wetlands, making sure we don't shoot our wetland birds. So it’s not all doom and gloom. There are some success stories. There are many things we can do. I think 50 years ago, there were only something like 300 bald eagles in the lower 48 states. Bald eagles are now nesting in every state apart from Hawaii. Our conservation efforts have done a great job.”

Stuart Pimm is a world leader in the study of present-day extinctions and what can be done to prevent them. His research covers the reasons why species become extinct, how fast they do so, the global patterns of habitat loss and species extinction and, importantly, the management consequences of this research. Pimm received his BSc degree from Oxford University in 1971 and his Ph.D. from New Mexico State University in 1974. Pimm is the author of over 350 scientific papers and five books. His commitmnt to the interface between science and policy has led to his testimony to both House and Senate Committees on the re-authorization of the Endangered Species Act. In 2019, he won the International Cosmos Prize, which recognised his founding and directing Saving Nature, a non-profit that uses donations for carbon emissions offsets to fund local conservation groups in areas of exceptional tropical biodiversity to restore their degraded lands. 

· https://nicholas.duke.edu/people/faculty/pimm

· Saving Nature: Rescue endangered habitats and vulnerable communities from environmental destruction: https://savingnature.com

· Connect with Nature - Share your Observations of the Natural World  www.inaturalist.org

· NatGeo’s Big Cats Initiative: https://www.nationalgeographic.org/projects/big-cats-initiative/

· The World According to Pimm: A https://www.amazon.com/Scientist-Audits-Earth-Stuart-Pimm/dp/0813535409/ref=sr_1_1?crid=3A29YJYQ1JPOM&keywords=The+World+According+to+Pimm&qid=1652772158&sprefix=the+world+according+to+pimm%2Caps%2C130&sr=8-1

· www.oneplanetpodcast.org
· www.creativeprocess.info