Fanny Agostini offers us a short course on the history of biodiversity on Friday, to prove to us that humans have made a lot of progress in trying to preserve it. But these efforts are not yet sufficient to put it out of danger.

Fanny, you tell us that despite the worrying figures for the loss of biodiversity on the planet, we have never been so aware of the importance of preserving it.

To be convinced, I wanted to give you some historical reminders this morning which show that the concept of preserving biodiversity a few decades ago was light years away from our concerns. Including my home in Haute-Loire, not far from Puy-en-Velay. A gentleman, nicknamed the viper, became famous in the late 1890s for killing thousands of vipers, for a premium paid by the administration.

This was also the case for wolves, considered to be much more virulent than today, since a law was even promulgated on August 3, 1882 with the aim of eradicating them. A slaughter premium rewarded 40 francs for a wolf cub, 100 for a wolf or a wolf. The consequences of this law inflicted the death blow on the wolf in France.

In other countries also certain animals considered as harmful have been tracked.

In the United States, Ohio even boasted of being an insect-free state. Mao's China waged a campaign against rats and sparrows, flies and mosquitoes. Even schoolchildren were involved, armed with a DDT pump, a powerful insecticide now banned for its toxicity.

With, after the fact, very strong and counterproductive consequences on the crops because the Chinese leaders realized in 1960 that its mass eradications were starting to create great ecological imbalances, responsible for a famine that China experienced few time after.

Biodiversity better considered today than yesterday but still in danger.

That is why we need laws, common rules. This will be the subject of all the major meetings at the start of the year 2021, with the congress of the International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN) in Marseille and the summit of biodiversity. They should lay down a stricter framework, relying on the coronavirus crisis as a step to pass the second by protecting species and by extension Humanity.