Georgina Mace on threatened species
The Life Scientific
BBC
4.6 • 1.4K Ratings
🗓️ 12 July 2016
⏱️ 28 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Despite decades of conservation work, in zoos and in the field, the rate at which species are going extinct is speeding up. Georgina Mace has devoted her Life Scientific to trying to limit the damage to our planet's bio-diversity from this alarming loss. For ten years she worked on the Red List of Threatened Species, developing a robust set of scientific criteria for assessing the threat of extinction facing every species on the planet. When the list was first published, she expected resistance from big business; but not the vicious negative reaction she received from many wildlife NGOS. Her careful quantitative analysis revealed that charismatic animals, like the panda and the polar bear, are not necessarily the most at risk.
Producer: Anna Buckley.
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Hello and |
| 0:02.0 | welcome to the podcast of the Life Scientific. |
| 0:04.0 | First broadcast on BBC Radio 4. |
| 0:06.0 | I'm Jumal Kiele and my mission is to interview the most |
| 0:10.0 | fascinating and important scientists alive today and to find out what makes them tick. |
| 0:16.6 | My guest today says she's continually surprised by her success as a scientist. |
| 0:22.1 | For decades she conscientiously avoided academia. |
| 0:25.0 | Now she's a professor of biodiversity and ecosystems at University College London |
| 0:30.0 | and a fellow of the Royal Society. Throughout her career Dame Georgina Mace has |
| 0:34.8 | pioneered new ways of thinking about conservation, always favoring quantitative |
| 0:40.0 | analysis over passionate arguments, but she's perhaps best known for the work she did |
| 0:44.6 | developing a robust set of criteria to assess the threat of extinction facing so |
| 0:49.6 | many species on the planet. She's the brains behind the red list of threatened species |
| 0:54.7 | that has formed the cornerstone of global conservation policy since 1996. |
| 0:59.6 | Georgina Mace, welcome to her life scientific. Thank you for having me. |
| 1:03.0 | Now, I do find it quite incredible to think that you and just a handful of colleagues have effectively |
| 1:09.3 | shaped global conservation policy as we know it today. |
| 1:13.7 | I mean we're talking about the future of planet Earth here and all the species. |
| 1:18.5 | It sounds like a huge responsibility for just half a dozen or so people to be putting this all together? |
| 1:23.6 | Yes I mean I suspect if somebody set out to do it now they wouldn't do it the way we did it. |
| 1:28.8 | I suspect there would be a much more elaborate process to create a working group and all the rest of it. |
| 1:34.0 | I'm thinking of for example you know the International Panel on Climate Change |
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