Luigi BoitaniWorld voice on large carnivores

Luigi Boitani defines biodiversity as the diversity of life on Earth, placing it on the same level as the air we breathe: fundamental, vital, non-negotiable. Not a scientific topic among others, but the condition of our very existence. The comparison to air is not rhetorical. It is a conceptual choice designed to make biodiversity perceptible not as a detail of nature, but as the biological infrastructure that makes human life possible.

Boitani then introduces a concept that might seem uncomfortable, and which he delivers without softening. Natural systems carry a high degree of redundancy. If humanity were to eliminate all wolves from the planet, life on Earth would continue. This does not mean that individual species are dispensable, but that their value cannot be measured solely in terms of system survival. Every species contributes in a unique way to the meaning and richness of the world as we know it. Losing a species is not a technical extinction; it is an irreversible impoverishment. A subtle but decisive distinction, because it shifts the conversation from the utilitarian argument, what do we need to survive, to the ethical one: what are we responsible for.

The sharpest point concerns the difference between existence and functioning. The goal of conservation action should not be to keep biodiversity present as a statistical fact, but to ensure that it continues to function correctly within ecosystems. A distinction Luigi Boitani considers crucial. It is not enough that species exist; they must do their work within the web of relationships that sustains them. Conservation that stopped at existence, without attending to functioning, would amount to nothing more than an illusion of protection.

Underlying everything is an ethical question. The human being is the only species on Earth endowed with moral sense. From this follows the responsibility to act in defense of the environment, not as one option among others, but as an obligation. Not a political opinion, not a cultural preference: a direct consequence of the human condition.

In a few minutes of conversation, Boitani shifts the frame multiple times: from science to philosophy, from utilitarian argument to moral argument, from describing how the system works to asking what it means. He does so with the composure of someone who has worked for a long time on these connections and has no need to force any of them.