John Gibbons: Every day we delay action, another 150 or so species are lost to earth forever

Biodiversity loss is as much a threat as climate change but the political record on dealing with this crisis has been as abysmal here as it has been globally

A beached whale in California: a report in 2018 found that even if biodiversity loss were to somehow stop almost immediately, it would take millions, perhaps tens of millions, of years for mammal populations and diversity on Earth to recover. Picture: Getty

The natural world is a vast repository of more than a billion years of evolutionary history, a priceless record of life emerging against the odds. This living library is, however, being decimated and the conflagration is gathering pace.

As the world struggles to come to terms with the climate and Covid-19 emergencies, it seems hard to imagine there could be another crisis of equal magnitude and gravity right under our noses, and our feet. But ...