A lot has changed in the world since the Endangered Species Act (ESA) was enacted 50 years ago in December 1973.
Two researchers at The Ohio State University were among a group of experts invited by the journal Science to discuss how the ESA has evolved and what its future might hold.
Tanya Berger-Wolf, faculty director of Ohio State’s Translational Data Analytics Institute, led a group that wrote on “Sustainable, trustworthy, human-technology partnership.” Amy Ando, professor and chair of the university’s Department of Agricultural, Environmental, and Development Economics, wrote on “Harnessing economics for effective implementation.”
Berger-Wolf and her colleagues wrote, “We are in the middle of a mass extinction without even knowing all that we are losing and how fast.” But technology can help address that.
For example, they note the value of tools like camera traps that survey animal species and smartphone apps that allow citizen scientists to count insects, identify bird songs and report plant observations.
New tech has allowed scientists to monitor animal and plant populations at scale for the first time, said Berger-Wolf, who is also a professor of computer science and engineering, evolution, ecology and organismal biology, and electrical and computer engineering. One challenge is to find new ways to extract all the information from these new sources of data.
“But even with all this data, we are still monitoring only a tiny fraction of the biodiversity out in the world,” she said. “Without that information, we don’t know what we have, how different species are doing and whether our policies to protect endangered species are working.”
Most important, Berger-Wolf said, is the need to make sure to keep humans in the process. Technology needs to connect data, connect different regions of the world, connect people to nature and connect people to people.
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