A ROCK is more than just stony stuff. It’s also a vital clue to how life and landscape evolved. Geodiversity – the variety of rocks in all their forms – is as crucial in mapping the history of the Earth as biodiversity is in tracing the evolution of its life forms.
Is geodiversity as threatened today as biodiversity is? Apparently so. Rock collectors, fossil hunters and others are defacing or removing formations to such an extent that in some places they are irreversibly altering the landscape, making it a lot harder to discern the conditions in which, say, a volcano formed or an ammonite fossilised.
A prime example is the Alpes-de-Haute-Provence region of France, where collectors took so many fossils from what is probably Europe’s biggest geological open-air museum that the sites have almost been ruined. Fossils are still looted in huge quantities from the Badlands National Park in South Dakota.
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How much should we care? Well, remember that it was spectacular geological features that kick-started the national park movement in the US – think of Yellowstone’s geysers – and New Zealand. In the UK, about a third of listed sites of special scientific interest are geological. In Geodiversity, the world’s first book on the issue (Wiley, 2003), Murray Gray points out that the biodiversity of an ecosystem stems from its underlying geology.
So how do we save the rocks? The answer could be geoparks. France made part of Haute-Provence into a geological reservation. Italy has preserved sites in Sicily for their outstanding geology. UNESCO is launching its own initiative. It envisages a global network of 500 geoparks, all of them ready to welcome rock enthusiasts and tourists – so long as they leave their hammers at home.