Sustainability related "Footprint" calculation methodologies have been used for human. But has it ever been used for animals? If that, then how? Can someone provide me some link related to this work?
Ecological footprint aims to measure how is the present human consumption or activity impacting the earth. Judging on your question, I guess you would like to find out what is the impact of the animal's activity/consumption posed to the earth, if I am not mistaken.
If this is the case, then I was wondering whether this research topic is worth for further study or not, because animal is part of the natural ecosystem that providing services to human. Being part of the ecosystem, the animals are subject to the law of the nature, where their interrelationship with the nature (i.e. symbiosis, predator and prey) will be balanced naturally. Any impact their posed to the nature will shift the nature to another level of balance (for example the extinction of dinosaur). In this sense, there should be no worry about what is the footprint of the animal have on the planet.
Thank you Bishwajit Ghose Sir.
But my query is about footprint of animals in their native state/haitat i.e. unmanipulated stressless conditions.
Regards.
Thank you Chee hung Foo Sir.
I understand your suggestion. But for the sake of conservation, wouldn't it be better to understand actual resource consumption of animals? I think we might use that for watching out if the necessary resources are enough / optimum for its survival or not.
Regards.
Very interesting question. To date, all footprinting is humanocentric, with an idea that there should be some absolute minimum of each biome that is set aside in a 'natural' state (ie, not being actively exploited by humans). The assumption is that 1/6 of the world could be set aside for everything other than humans - we can discuss if that is enough in a separate conversation. But in the end, if there isn't a way of footprinting other lifeforms (why limit to animals?), then we won't know if leaving that finite portion is sufficient for these species. Or, ultimately, for our own.
Again, I am not sure whether it is practical or not to conduct this research. First challenge is data accessibility. Second, is it conceptually right or not, because nature can always find the way to balance itself. Only with human intrusion that causes the degradation of the environment. And therefore, we came out with the footprint concept to measure human impact.
Douglas Nuttall Sir, thank you for your insight. I happen to think in the same way, footprint for all organisms separately, to understand their resource consumption trends.
Regards.
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