For the past half-century, Thomas Lovejoy has studied “the shimmering variety of life on Earth” in the Amazon rainforest. The 74-year-old tropical biologist, who teaches at George Mason University, coined the term biological diversity in 1980 to refer to the millions of different species that comprise life on Earth, of which scientists have documented perhaps 10 percent. Unfortunately, countless organisms will vanish before we ever discover them, let alone investigate their potential benefits in fields like medicine, agriculture and genetics. But if we work now to restore ecosystems, Lovejoy argues, we can avoid the worst of these losses — and slow down climate change, too.
Discover: Scientists say we face the largest mass extinction since the disappearance of the dinosaurs. You have pointed out that it isn’t just species that are going extinct — it’s entire ecosystems. Which ones are most threatened?
Thomas Lovejoy: Most of the lowland tropical rainforests ...
