Editor's note: This post is written by Peter T. Jenkins, the director of international conservation for Defenders of Wildlife.

Some people feel that all the attention paid to global warming has diminished our focus on other pressing issues, such as the extremely high rate of species extinctions and habitat losses that are right now devastating Earth’s wondrous natural diversity. I don’t think so. Fighting global warming is saving species. Saving species usually means saving their natural habitats, which is part of fighting global warming. The two go hand in hand.

And that means wildlife conservationists need to dramatically step up our efforts. The challenge is so immense, we have to do great work—not just good or OK work—to have any chance of success. Global warming leaves so little margin for error on the other threats facing wild animals and plants, we must reduce the other threats if we want to save them. Habitat destruction, overharvesting, disease and threats from invasive species—they all have to be reined in.

There are some relatively "easy fixes" for some of these threats. Overharvesting is not too hard to regulate where there is will and infrastructure, such as in the U.S. We have some really good models for monitoring and preventing overharvesting here; sport hunting, for example, is carefully monitored and regulated. At the international level, there is at least a modestly effective treaty that can block international trade in overharvested species, such as rhino parts: CITES, the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species. It is very far from perfect, but it can work. In fact, it already has: CITES has helped reduce trade in elephant ivory.

Nations can reduce invasions of non-native species if they have the will to value environmental protection and public health over laissez-faire free trade. Unfortunately, the U.S. is a poor model in many ways on this. While its relatively good on protecting agriculture from invasive species, the U.S. is very bad on protecting the environment and the public. We can look to New Zealand and Australia for more precautionary systems where trade is still facilitated, while proactive programs have been put in place to prevent invasive species from coming in and causing further damage. New Zealand and Australia learned the hard way after suffering horrible invasions of non-native weeds and pests, but they are showing the rest of the world the way now.

Other countries need to follow that proactive path.

So there are good models for dealing with trade, overharvesting, invasive species and other threats to nature from globalization. We must start doing better than ever in protecting Earth’s native wildlife—and humans, too—from these threats, because of the compounded effect of global warming. It puts all our other conservation work in the glaring light of success or failure.

Love of natural biodiversity is a mortar, bonding humans together as a species. If we lose that mortar we will fail as a species. We can succeed in wildlife conservation—if I didn’t believe that I would not have been doing what I have for the last 20 years.

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Peter T. Jenkins is the Director of International Conservation for Defenders of Wildlife. His areas of expertise include International conservation law and policy, invasive species, wildlife trade, biotechnology and the Endangered Species Act. Peter manages Defenders’ campaigns aimed at protecting global biodiversity reforming the wildlife trade, and blocking imports of non-native invasive species into the United States.

Before joining Defenders in 2006, Peter served for five years as Attorney/Policy Analyst for the International Center for Technology Assessment and the Center for Food Safety, and for one year as Senior Attorney for the Center for Science in the Public Interest. From 1996 to 2000, he specialized as a consultant on both endangered and invasive species issues. Before that, Peter worked as a contractor for the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service in Albuquerque on its Mexican wolf reintroduction project as a program manager; as an adjunct professor at the University of New Mexico Law School’s Center for Wildlife Law; and as an attorney/policy analyst at the U.S. Congress, Office of Technology Assessment. He is the principal author of the report, Broken Screens: The Regulation of Live Animal Imports in the United States, and co-authored the report Harmful Non-Indigenous Species in the United States. He is a founder of the National Environmental Coalition on Invasive Species, and a member of the IUCN Invasive Species Specialist Group.

Peter earned his B.A. from Hampshire College, Masters in Environmental Studies from the Yale School of Forestry and Environmental Studies, and J.D. from the University of Puget Sound Law School.