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Giant whales are dying in the hundreds, insects and birds disappearing, species going extinct.

In the seas and on land, even in the Earth’s most remote regions, the loss of living animals and plants is real, dramatic and irreversible. In just the last forty years, two thirds of large animals and birds have vanished. This global biological crisis not only threatens life on Earth - it endangers human wellbeing and survival also, through the collapse of the very systems which support us.

Burning forests, dying coral reefs, poisoned environments everywhere and now, climate change on top. Humans are responsible for the worst mass extinction event in the last 65 million years, when dinosaurs and other life were wiped out by an asteroid. Earth is our only Planet. If we ruin it, we have nowhere else to live. Just like in James Cameron’s film ‘Avatar’: if we kill nature, then nature kills us.

Stop species loss now! Protecting animals, habitats, ecosystems and our climate must become top priority work for all humans – for governments, children, parents, companies and scientists. It‘s really very simple: Biodiversity first!

Scientists estimated there are between 7-10 million animal, plant and protist species living on Earth today. This is up to 5 times the number of species already known to science. We may be losing more than 100 species per day, most of them unknown.

Explore and save the diversity of life now, while it still exists! Humanity urgently needs data on how many and which species occur where, and what they are doing there. We can only protect what we know and what we understand. Like us, living species need faces, names and histories – identities!

Our aim thus is a huge international, collaborative effort to inventory and save all global animal, plant and protist species, called the “Inventory of Life”.

- As an immediate response, we ask for 100 additional positions for professional taxonomists in each of the G20 nations.

- We also propose a World Council of Life similar to the world climate council, to provide international reports on the state of life on our planet and what can be done to sustain it.

We urge you to support the Inventory of Life and the World Council of Life.

Remember, you too can make a personal difference to the world your children and grandchildren will inherit.

Please act now – before it is too late.

Michael and Vreni

P.S.: Dr. Vreni Häussermann, winner of the prestigious Rolex Awards 2016, and Prof. Michael Schrödl are biologists supposed to explore and help protecting life. What we see wherever we go, however, is destruction, depletion and loss of life! This means ‚no future‘ for all kinds of life including ours, yours and that of your children, and this we cannot tolerate silently anymore! Therefore, we started a petition. From our own money we are sending our German book ‘BiodiversiTOT’ (www.bioDIEversity.org) to Angela Merkel, to parliamentarians, decision makers and billionaires, asking for support and substantial funding of the inventory and protection of animal diversity, as long as it exists. We are going international with this English version; other languages will follow.