Guest Lecturer from Lithuania: All Species’ Data in Red List to Conserve Biodiversity

Biodiversity is the diversity of species in one habitat. Indonesians must be proud because Indonesia is rich in biodiversity. However, issue regarding uncontrolled natural resource exploitation will damage, or even destroy biodiversity.

Such things were said by Dr Zydrunas Preiksa, lecturer from Vytautas Magnus University, Lithuania when he delivered the public lecture in Department of Biology, Faculty of Mathematics and Natural Sciences (FMIPA) IPB University, Tuesday (24/9) in Biology Reading Room.

Thousands year ago, the earth wasn’t inhabited by humans. Earth landscape is full of forests. Since the human came, forest landscape is decreasing gradually, transforming into housing and agricultural field to sustain human life. Dr Zydrunas gave an example of Shanghai, which in 1990 still has open forest in the city, which has been slowly decreasing since 2010.

“Biodiversity can be talked about in different contexts. In ecology, biodiversity enables living things inside to survive. It can also be looked in the perspective of economics, aesthetics, and recreation. Those various perspectives, of course, have consequences. For instance, when human beings hunt protected birds just for recreation and aesthetics. Also, the habit of wearing disposable wooden chopsticks. This will negatively impact forest ecosystem,” said Dr Zydrunas.

According to the statement from World Wide Fund (WWF) in 2020, it is estimated that 5-10 percent species of the Earth will face extinction.

Dr Zydrunas said that there are no other living things except human beings who have high intelligence so that they can invent technology. Because of this intelligence, humans tend to exploit natural resources. “A lion will not eat all antelopes, because it does, the other lions will die. However, humans tend to exploit everything,” he added.

In his lecture, Dr Zydrunas said that there will be no problem if one species goes extinct. Living things have exceptional survivability. If one food source is gone, they will find others. The problem arises when there are dozens, or hundreds of species which slowly go extinct. This will disturb the stability of the ecosystem. The solution made to conserve a species is to archive all species in the Red List. Agreements between countries are also important to be done.

According to Dr Zydrunas, there is Natura2020 in European countries. This program is the result of commitment of European United in conserving rare and endangered species. Natura2020 conserves rare birds and other animals, plants, and other species. Dr Zydrunas said that his country of origin Lithuania managed to build a protected sanctuary as much as 16.7 percent.

In the end of the event, Dr Zydrunas asked, “Which is more important, preserving a 2000-year-old Colosseum or 500-hundred-year-old oak tree? Both are important. The difference is that if we destroy the Colosseum and raise fund to rebuild it, the process doesn’t take another 2000 years. However, if we cut an Oak tree and raise fund from all over the world, we still have to wait until the next 500 years to get it back.” (Ard)