The article said, “Mace, [] develops criteria for listing species on the IUCN Red List of Threatened Species and co-ordinating biodiversity inputs to the Millennium Ecosystem Assessment,” so she should know. Hal Mooney who chairs DIVERSITAS said that biodiversity experts are finally engaging in policy debates, as they should. I think a global panel of biodiversity scientists collecting data worldwide on all species is long overdue and their input badly needed. Much like the IPCC for climate change, there needs to be a unified system for tracking loss of species on this planet. It is after all, loss of life and should be a forewarning.

So it was good to read in the ENS article that scientists are planning “a science-based global biodiversity observing system called GEO-BON to improve coverage and consistency in observations at ground level and via remote sensing.” The GEO-BON head, Prof. Robert Scholes stated: ‘GEO-BON will help give us a comprehensive baseline against which scientists can track biodiversity trends and evaluate the status of everything from genes to ecosystem services.’ Recently in Nairobi, the world’s environment ministers “considered the creation of IPBES-the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services-which would require UN General Assembly Approval.”

That’s impressive and I would say to track biodiversity is probably harder to do than track climate change. While biodiversity scientists are busy trying to ascertain how quickly extinction approaches many of our beloved animal species like primates, whales, dolphins, all big cats and bears, all elephants and rhinos, other scientists are still discovering new species. I just read an article in the Sept. 23^rd edition of Time that over 30 new species of animal were recently discovered in an extinct volcano in Papua, New Guinea. They exist because they were obviously sheltered from man, and the outside world. GEO-BON has its work cut out for it, and none to soon because there is a silent crisis emerging—the collapse of freshwater ecosystems. Collapse is a scary word that should tell us we’re way behind where we should be.

Read the whole article:
http://www.ens-newswire.com/ens/oct2009/2009-10-13-01.asp.