To guard against extinction, we must advocate for common species.
Nothing commands attention like rarity. In the natural world, rarity is most starkly represented by the last members of a declining species. These scarce plants and animals are infinitively valuable; they represent the final hope for averting extinction.
Commonness is often associated with the bland and mundane, even worthless. It invites complacency. As observed by writer Aldous Huxley, “Most human beings have an absolute and infinite capacity for taking things for granted.” But if we are to conserve nature — and its myriad benefits to people — we must maintain our focus on the familiar.
Such notions of limitless nature carry great risk. The lessons have been hard; the upheaval has been ecological and economic. In North America, they include the extinction of the passenger pigeon, which was once the most numerous bird in the world; the decimation of northern cod, which at one time was so thick in numbers that they slowed the passage of ships; the destruction of plains bison, the rapid demise of American chestnut and the decline of eastern white pine.
Notably, the shifts in abundance of common species can translate into sizeable shifts in ecosystem functioning. Birds, despite their diminutive stature, throw their aggregate weight around, owing to the innumerable insects they eat, the flowers they pollinate and the seeds they disperse. Guarding against the extinction of commonness By their sheer numbers, common species can be a force of nature. Well before the finality of extinction, however, such ecological roles can be diminished.
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