Declinism

Biological Parallel

Conservation science has a problem: we're restoring ecosystems to baselines that were already broken. Researchers in 2025 found that 40% of European seabird populations began declining before the 1970s, yet conservation targets anchor to 1970s levels—treating already-depleted populations as 'normal.' Each generation of scientists resets the baseline to the degraded state they first encountered. This pattern appears across long-lived social species with cultural transmission. African elephant matriarchs remember richer savannas from their youth spanning 60+ years, but struggle to transmit quantified historical context to younger generations—the knowledge exists but degrades over generational handoffs. Killer whale matrilines show similar patterns: older females remember prey abundances that younger pod members treat as mythical. Scientists studying coral reef fish communities anchor to degraded reefs, perceiving further decline while missing cumulative collapse across decades. The mechanism: overlapping generations create multi-generational memory gaps. Each generation anchors perceptually to the diminished conditions they first encountered, detecting further decline but missing total degradation across centuries. Matriarchal knowledge in elephants and orcas partially counters this through cultural transmission, but knowledge transfer failure is common—most lineages reset baselines each generation. Perceived decline is real; recognizing cumulative decline requires intergenerational data, which few species maintain.