What if the greatest lesson of the pandemic was not how much we could live without, but how quickly the natural world could begin to heal when we gave it a chance?
During the COVID-19 shutdown in 2020, when millions of people stayed home and travel and industry slowed dramatically, pollution and smog levels declined in Los Angeles and other cities. In India, people in some areas could see the Himalayan Mountains from their rooftops for the first time in decades. For a brief moment, the world seemed to exhale—and nature reminded us what was possible.
That experience showed us something important: our lives are deeply interconnected with the lives of animals and the health of the planet. We do not have to choose between human prosperity and a thriving natural world. We can find ways to share this planet with all life.
Sometimes, meaningful conservation can be as simple as giving wildlife the space and time it needs.
Beaches can be temporarily closed during nesting seasons so endangered loggerhead turtles can come ashore to lay their eggs undisturbed. Protecting those nesting sites gives hatchlings a better chance of surviving their perilous journey to the ocean.
Farmers and elephants can also coexist. In some communities, people have planted strips of grasses along the edges of farmland, giving elephants an alternative source of food and reducing the likelihood that they will enter and trample crops. These practical solutions demonstrate that conservation does not always require choosing one species over another. Sometimes, it simply requires understanding what animals need and finding room for them in our shared landscape.
The oceans offer another powerful example. Ships can slow down and coordinate their movements in areas where whales and other marine animals live and communicate. Underwater noise from human activity can interfere with the sounds animals depend on to find one another, navigate, feed, and survive. Reducing that noise can give marine life a better chance to thrive.
And we can continue reducing our carbon footprint—because climate change affects every living thing, from the smallest insects and plants to the largest mammals and the ecosystems upon which we all depend.
None of these actions alone will solve the environmental challenges facing our planet. But together, they represent something profoundly important: the choices we make every day can either make the world harder for wildlife—or give life a chance.
We share this beautiful, fragile planet with millions of other species. They do not have the ability to speak at our dinner tables, vote in our elections, or decide how we use the land and oceans. But they depend on the choices we make.
There is still time to choose coexistence.
As Jane Goodall has reminded us, “there is so much worth saving.”
And there is.
