Introduction: Biologists of the World, Unite?

The Halls of Power From habitat loss and industrial overharvesting to climate breakdown and "biological annihilation" (Ceballos et al. 2017): across virtually every indicator, the decimation of life on earth grinds onward at a planetary scale.Since 1970, wildlife populations have declined by 73 percent (WWF 2024).Out of all remaining mammals in the world, 96 percent are now either humans (36 percent) or livestock (60 percent) when measured by weight (Bar-On et al. 2018).A million species are currently threatened with extinction (Brondízio et al. 2019).This growing sense of dire ecological crisis, compounded by widespread political failure, has provoked extensive debate among environmentalists, leading to desperate calls for new ideas, new strategies, and ultimately a new way forward for conservation.1 In 2016, at the World Conservation Congress in Honolulu, I watched Inger Andersen, the director-general for the International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN), speak to the urgency of this imperative.2 Addressing the ten thousand delegates who had convened for the summit, she delivered this admonition to her fellow conservationists:We are losing the battle.And that is why so many people are interested in trying to find more tools, more ways, and more narratives to resonate in impor tant places.One of the things that is most critical is trying to better resonate in the halls of power.In the boardrooms.And, in the heart of the market economy.Of course, this injunction to "better resonate in the halls of power" came after decades of intensive efforts among conservationists already attempting to enact precisely this strategy.Yet in spite of these postures, a condition of escalating ecological destruction-a grim circumstance prosaically referred to as "biodiversity loss," but which could be more starkly described as "the Introduction: Biologists of the World, Unite?