Conservation Innovation Lab PhD student Paola Sangolqui was featured on the cover of ASU Thrive's Society of Environmental Journalists special issue. Her work in the Galapagos Marine Reserve was part of an article by Maiana Villegas, "Creating a road map to a balanced planet," on how ASU researchers are mapping biodiversity in order to track and hopefully ameliorate the biodiversity loss crisis. Center for Biodiversity Outcomes Founding Director Leah Gerber and Program Lead for Marine Conservation Beth Polidoro were also featured in the article.
Read an excerpt below, or read the full article here.
Why biodiversity matters
In 50 years, from 1970 to 2020, we’ve lost an estimated 73% of the world’s wildlife populations on average, according to the 2024 World Wildlife Report. A United Nations report, co-authored by Leah Gerber, director of ASU’s Center for Biodiversity Outcomes, found that Earth’s biodiversity is declining at a rate unprecedented in human history.
According to the 2024 IUCN Red List of Threatened Species, there currently are more than 166,000 species on the list, with more than 46,300 of those species threatened with extinction. That biodiversity loss has huge impacts on humans. “The more [healthy and thriving] species that naturally occur in an area, the better that ecosystem is able to absorb shocks, threats and disturbances,” says Beth Polidoro, an associate professor of environmental chemistry at ASU, involved in the Center for Biodiversity Outcomes and a participant on the IUCN Red List. “We need these healthy ecosystems because they provide ecosystem services for us.” Healthy forests provide clean air; healthy soil is needed for us to grow food; healthy rivers maintain water quality.
ASU works around the globe to help protect biodiversity. Paola Sangolqui, ’24 MS in biology, is dedicated to updating zoning around the Galapagos Islands — home to many species not found anywhere else on Earth. Sangolqui is a third-year PhD candidate who works with Gerber in the Center for Biodiversity Outcomes and grew up on the islands. The Galapagos are especially vulnerable to invasive species, Sangolqui says, and protecting the area’s biodiversity is important for the study of evolution and ecology and crucial to the livelihoods of the local population, 80% of which depends on nature based tourism.