Please continue to spread the word about saving Mims. Only 2 out of every 10 people we speak to at public events are aware of the town’s plan for Mims. Please raise your voices. 

We are a small group working to raise awareness to preserve this vital habitat. We need your voices and those around you. Below is a recently published article (excerpt) about the dire need to preserve versus restore. 

Excerpt from Frontiers in Science article:

Nature Positive: why protecting intact nature comes first—and what success could look like.

Human activities are driving a global decline in biodiversity and are interfering with the natural processes essential for human well-being.

There is an urgent need for a paradigm shift toward a "Nature Positive" (NP) future, where the health and resilience of the Earth system are recognized as the fundamental basis for human prosperity. This requires that humanity acts to halt and reverse the loss of nature by 2030.

This requires a biodiversity conservation approach that accounts for both biotic and abiotic components of the Earth system.

Our findings emphasize that preventing the loss of intact biomes, ecosystems, and species assemblages is the most critical strategy while acknowledging the urgency of extinction prevention and the need for restoration.

Human exploitation of nature driven by prevailing economic systems of production and consumption is causing a rapid and catastrophic decline in biodiversity (1) while simultaneously disrupting the climate system (2). These actions are actively destabilizing the Earth system upon which human health and development depend (3), and the trajectory of environmental degradation is accelerating, placing life as we know it at grave risk.

Biodiversity loss occurs at three interconnected scales-species, ecosystems, and natural processes-all of which affect Earth system stability. At the species scale, 48% of vertebrate and insect species are in decline, with only 49% remaining stable and 3% increasing (4). Within individual species, genetic diversity is also in decline (5): globally, 6% of species are losing genetic diversity, rising to 24% among island species (6). At the ecosystem scale, 54% of the world's ecoregions are severely degraded, with an additional 25% undergoing further degradation, leaving only a quarter largely intact (7,8).

Natural processes, which encompass both biotic and abiotic interactions across ecosystem, biome, continental, and planetary scales, are also under threat. Migration, a key biotic process essential for maintaining ecosystem health and structure (9), is increasingly imperiled across terrestrial, freshwater, and marine environments.

Alarmingly, 44% of species tracked by the Convention on Migratory Species (CMS) are in serious decline, with 97% of listed migratory fish species facing extinction (10). Similarly, biotic and abiotic interactions, also known as biophysical processes (11), are threatened. For example, running freshwater systems, such as springs, streams, and rivers, are critical biophysical processes that sustain the health of both terrestrial and aquatic ecosystems, yet only 30% of river systems worldwide remain free flowing (Box 1) (12). Excessive nutrient run-off from terrestrial sources has created anoxic "dead zones" in estuaries downstream from the world's most densely inhabited areas (13).

Visit the journal online for more details!