The Normalization of Loss

Today, April came to show me her newborn foal.

April is a donkey whom—along with her family—I have helped sustain by providing food and water every day, in a world that is steadily shrinking under growing human pressure.

Her foal I named Catootje.

Seeing this beautiful little animal should have brought only joy. Instead, it brought both wonder and unease.

A donkey can live for forty years.

I am past sixty, so I will most likely not outlive her. But for as long as I can, I will try to make her life a little easier.

And that made me ask myself:
What kind of world will she come to know as normal?

Forty Years

Catootje may live for forty years.

Forty years is a long time.

Long enough for landscapes to change quietly, step by step, until what once felt familiar is gone.

On Bonaire, more roads will be built. More land will be developed. More fences will appear. More nature will disappear.

The Normalization of Loss

Nature rarely disappears all at once.

A tree is cut down.
A patch of vegetation is cleared.
A road cuts through nature.
A development expands.

Each change seems small when viewed in isolation.

People notice at first.
Then they adjust.
Before long, the loss is no longer seen as loss at all.

What once felt like a loss becomes the new baseline.

The next generation accepts as normal what the previous generation would have recognized as loss.

This is one of the greatest challenges facing conservation today.

Not only the loss of nature itself — but the loss of awareness that anything has been lost.

A Shrinking World

This is not only happening on Bonaire.

Across the world, nature is shrinking. The Amazon, for example, continues to lose forest to illegal gold mining and the expansion of agriculture.

On Bonaire, the loss of open space is visible every day.

A little less green.
A few more buildings.
Another fence.
Another road.
A little less space for wildlife.

No single change feels decisive.

Yet over time, the pattern becomes unmistakable.

The landscape changes.
Habitat shrinks.

And what once felt unacceptable slowly becomes normal.

Half -Earth

I often think about the ideas of E. O. Wilson.

Wilson proposed that humanity should leave half of the Earth for other species.

Not because humans are unimportant.

But because we are not the only inhabitants of this planet.

Looking around today, the question almost seems more modest:

Can we stop taking what remains?

Every new road, every new development, and every new loss is justified as small and necessary.

Nature, however, experiences the cumulative effect.

No single change seems decisive.

Yet enough small losses can transform an entire landscape.

Catootje’s Future

Forty years from now, Catootje may still be alive.

What will Bonaire look like then?

How much open space for nature will remain?

How many mature trees will still stand?

How many natural areas will still be connected?

And how much room will remain for animals like her?

I do not know the answers.

But I do know this:

The future will not be shaped by one decision.

It will be shaped by thousands of small decisions that we either question—or accept.

And over time, what we accept becomes what we call normal.

The Danger of Silence

Perhaps the greatest threat to nature is not only destruction.

Perhaps it is silence.

The silence that follows when loss becomes normal.

When people stop noticing.
Stop questioning.
Stop remembering.
Stop caring.

Because once loss is accepted, what remains becomes easier to lose.

And harder to defend.

The greatest threat to nature is not only what we destroy.

It is what we are willing to accept as normal.

HELP US TO SAVE PLANTATION BOLIVIA FROM DESTRUCTION