Cars As the New Megafauna

#FloraAndFaunaFriday: how Australia has swapped wombats for Hiluxes

Saul Griffith shared a graphic this week that makes the biodiversity crisis uncomfortably concrete. He riffed on a 2018 paper The biomass distribution on Earth that famously estimated the weight all the living animals and plants on Earth. That paper showed that wild animals now make up less than four per cent of the biomass of all mammals on Earth - humans, their pets and livestock comprise the rest!

Saul’s twist was to drop CARS into that picture - basically saying: “We don’t have orcas, elephants, rhinos, kangaroos, bilbies or wombats covering the planet anymore. We have Toyota Hiluxes.” Yes of couse, cars aren’t biomass. But as a truth-telling Saul’s analogy works, because it shows what we don’t like to admit: biodiversity isn’t just “declining”; it is being replaced - by us, by the animals we eat, and by the stuff we use and build.

This is the bit conservation talk often skips. We’re clearing woodland, wetlands and cultural landscapes to make way for grazing, suburbs, roads, ports and mines. We’re super-sizing a handful of domestic species to feed an expanding, wealthier human population. We’re building transport systems that require every adult to own a metal box and to park it somewhere. And all of that is a swap! Biodiversity out; concrete, cows and Hiluxes in. This is why wild mammals and birds now show up in the global carbon ledger as an afterthought.

The car comparison also stings because it makes the problem local. It’s easy to blame mining in the Pilbara; it’s harder to look at the carpark at Woolies, freeway duplications and more housing estates on the edge of Sydney and admit that this is where the wombats were. Cars don’t just emit, they occupy. Every road, verge, carpark and driveway is space that can’t be habitat. If we electrify everything (and we should), we should also be asking: can we do mobility differently - with less space, so nature and community can have more?

Told this way, biodiversity loss stops being a tragic, faraway story and becomes a design choice. Over tens of thousands of years, First Nations Australians kept Country abundant on our continent. In the last 250 years we’ve made humans, livestock and machines the main animal presence. If replacement is the problem, replacement should be the solution: protect and restore habitat where people live; shrink the machine footprint; shift what we eat; and support First Nations leadership in restoring and caring for Country.

That’s the honest message in Saul’s image: we haven’t “lost” biodiversity. We’ve paved over the wombats and wallabies, and parked a Hilux instead. And don’t get me started on those obscenely huge Dodge RAMS!

Global Animal LIfe infographic from Saul Griffith.