300,000 Wondrous Nature Illustrations Put On-line by The Biodiversity Heritage Library

Are we tru­ly within the midst of a human-caused sixth mass extinc­tion, an period of “bio­log­i­cal anni­hello­la­tion”? Many sci­en­tists and pop­u­lar sci­ence writ­ers say sure, utilizing phrases like “Holocene” or “Anthro­pocene” to explain what fol­lows the Ordovi­cian, Devon­ian, Per­mi­an, Tri­as­sic, and Cre­ta­ceous peri­ods. Peter Bran­nen, the writer of extinc­tion his­to­ry The Ends of the Earth has discovered no less than one sci­en­tist who thinks the con­cept is “junk.” However Bran­nen quotes some alarm­ing sta­tis­tics. Chill­ing, even. “Till very latest­ly,” he writes, “all ver­te­brate life on the plan­et was wildlife. However astound­ing­ly, as we speak wildlife accounts for less than 3 per­cent of Earth’s land ani­mals; human beings, our stay­inventory, and our pets take up the stay­ing 97 per­cent of the bio­mass… nearly half of the Earth’s land has been con­vert­ed into farm­land.”

This state of affairs doesn’t bode properly for the mil­lions of stay­ing species get­ting edged out of their envi­ron­ments by agribusi­ness and cli­mate change. We study from extinc­tions previous that the plan­et rebounds after unimag­in­in a position cat­a­stro­phe. Life actual­ly does go on, although it could take mil­lions of years to recov­er. However the cur­hire types of life could dis­ap­pear earlier than their time. If we need to underneath­stand what’s at stake in addition to our personal frag­ile fos­sil-fuel-based civ­i­liza­tions, we have to con­nect to life emo­tion­al­ly in addition to intel­lec­tu­al­ly. Wanting globe-hop­ping phys­i­cal immer­sion within the Earth’s bio­di­ver­si­ty, we might onerous­ly do wager­ter than immers­ing our­selves within the tra­di­tion of nat­u­ral­ist writ­ing, artwork, and pho­tog­ra­phy that brings the world to us.

The Bio­di­ver­si­ty Her­itage Library (BHL), an “open entry dig­i­tal library for bio­di­ver­si­ty lit­er­a­ture and archives,” has for a few years been mak­ing it straightforward for peo­ple to con­nect to nature by means of nature writ­ing and illus­tra­tion. On Flickr, you could find 319,000 care­ful­ly curat­ed photos. The col­lec­tion itself is sub­di­vid­ed into dif­fer­ent pho­to albums drawn from his­tor­i­cal pub­li­ca­tions. For examination­ple, The Recent­wa­ter Fish­es of the British Isles (1911), The Hen (1869), and The Insect E-book (1901).

This picture archive presents expan­sive views of human­i­ty’s encounter with the nat­ur­al world, not solely by means of sta­tis­tics and aca­d­e­m­ic jar­gon, however by means of the artis­tic file­ing of received­der, sci­en­tif­ic curios­i­ty, and deep appre­ci­a­tion. Enter the archive right here.

Word: An ear­li­er ver­sion of this submit appeared on our web site in 2017.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Ernst Haeckel’s Sub­lime Draw­ings of Flo­ra & Fau­na: The Beau­ti­ful Sci­en­tif­ic Draw­ings That Influ­enced Europe’s Artwork Nou­veau Transfer­ment (1889)

Discover a New Archive of two,200 His­tor­i­cal Wildlife Illus­tra­tions (1916–1965): Cour­tesy of The Wildlife Con­ser­va­tion Soci­ety

In 1886, the US Gov­ern­ment Com­mis­sioned 7,500 Water­col­or Paint­ings of Each Recognized Fruit within the World: Down­load Them in Excessive Res­o­lu­tion

Watch 50 Hours of Nature Sound­scapes from the BBC: Sci­en­tif­i­cal­ly Confirmed to Ease Stress and

The Metic­u­lous, Ele­gant Illus­tra­tions of the Nature Noticed in England’s Coun­strive­facet

Josh Jones is a author and musi­cian primarily based in Durham, NC.