GC Advisor Gerardo Ceballos Featured on "60 Minutes"

Global Conservation advisor Gerardo Ceballos, a Mexican ecologist and one of the world's leading experts on extinction, was recently featured on CBS's 60 Minutes to discuss the earth's ongoing sixth mass extinction.

Dr. Ceballos is a GC Senior Advisor, Senior Researcher at the Institute of Ecology at the Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México (UNAM), and author of The Annihilation of Nature. He's a highly influential conservationist who conducts research in the Mirador-Calakmul Ecosystem.

Along with other leading scientists, Dr. Ceballos argues that humans would need “five more Earths” to maintain our current way of life.

"There is only 2 percent of the big fishes that were in the oceans 50 years ago. Only 2 percent are living. We have lost around 70 percent of all the animals that were in the-- in the planet. All the big animals, all the mammals, bird, 70 percent are gone since 1918. In Southeast Asia, you know, we have lost 90 percent of the tropical forest of Southeast Asia since 2000. So, our impact is so massive that we are becoming this meteorite that is impact the planet. The difference with the previous mass extinction is that they took tens of thousands, hundreds of thousand, even millions of years to happen. In this particular case, this is happening so fast, now in just two, three decades — even the species that are not affected directly by the extinction crisis won't have enough time to evolve and survive this impact that we're doing." -Dr. Gerardo Ceballos on 60 Minutes

We support Dr. Ceballos's work in the Mirador-Calakmul Ecosystem of Guatemala and Mexico and a crucial piece of the Maya Biosphere Reserve, contains a stunningly biodiverse rainforest ecosystem. Large populations of elusive jaguar and threatened white-lipped peccary live here, alongside pumas, tapirs, ocelots, agoutis, brocket deer, and rare harpy eagles.

Just 30 years ago, jaguar were virtually extinct in Mexico. Now, Calakmul is home to around 600 of them. Despite this success, Dr. Ceballos argues that we need to do more.

"All the big success that we have in protecting forests and recovering animals, like tigers in India, jaguars in Mexico, elephants in Botswana, and so on, are incredible, amazing, successes. But they are like grains of sand in a beach. And to really make a big impact we need to scale up this 10,000 times. So, they are important because they give us hope. But they are completely insufficient to cope with climate change.... What we will have to do is to really understand that the climate change and the species extinction is a threat to humanity. And then put all the machinery of society: political, economic, and social, towards finding solutions to the problems." -Dr. Gerardo Ceballos on 60 Minutes

Mirador's southern limestone cliffs are the last place in the world with viable populations of the orange-breasted falcon, and the park is on a critical flyway for birds migrating from central and eastern North America. It also has a rich cultural history; the ruins of the ancient Maya city of El Mirador lie here, including the impressive La Danta pyramid, the most voluminous in the world.

Unfortunately, the park is threatened by myriad pressures, including logging, road construction, illegal farming and ranching, drug trafficking, and looting of agricultural sites. In collaboration with our partners, the Foundation for Anthropological Research and Environmental Studies (FARES), Guatemalan NGO FundaEco, and the Rainforest Trust, Global Conservation has launched a Global Park Defense program to defend Mirador from destruction. 

To learn more, read our exclusive interview with Dr. Ceballos.