Too Many Extinctions: Global Extinction Crisis Worse Than Thought
Friday, August 14, 2009 at 5:41PM Too Many Extinctions: Global Extinction Crisis Worse Than Thought
Recently I received an e-mail newsletter stating we're currently undergoing the Sixth Extinction. Those of you who know me, will realize that my university post graduate studies included understanding extinction methodologies. As such, I have more than a passing interest in this topic.
Local and global extinctions occur continually in the natural world as environmental parameters change. However, global extinctions on the current scale that we are observing do not mimic the timings of natural systems - the timings and environmental cues have been skewed by human activity.
All wildlife and nature photographers should have a passion for conservation, whether it's a subject your keenly interested in or not, as ultimately your photographic subjects are at peril.
Rather than write a essay here or climb up onto my "not so high" box and preach, I though it best to copy the newsletter article below and add a link / reference to the original publisher of the information. I urge you to read on, as only then, will you hopefully understand the urgency to protect habitat to maintain genetic diversity.
ARTICLE
"The planet is in the midst of its sixth mass extinction event, the first in 65 million years -- this time, human caused -- and it's even worse than we imagined. A new report published in the international journal Conservation Biology shows that across the planet, nearly 17,000 of the 45,000 assessed species are threatened with extinction. And the crisis is hitting the Oceanic region of Australia, New Zealand, and the Pacific Islands especially hard, turning some of the Earth's most prominent biodiversity hotspots into extinction hotspots. The prime extinction drivers? Habitat loss and degradation, invasive species, climate change, overexploitation, pollution, and wildlife disease. Hmm, these all seem related to overpopulation.
Another report, just published in the journal Science, shows that extinction events tend to wipe out not just individual species, but entire evolutionary lineages -- species with a common ancestor, on the same branch of the tree of life. That means an activity driving one species toward extinction -- say, global warming threatening one type of seabird -- will likely harm all similar species: all seabirds. Of course, that means protecting one species is likely to help protect related species, making conservation all the more vital.
Reining in the extinction crisis is the single greatest challenge ever faced by humanity, and it's what the Center for Biological Diversity was born to do. By battling global warming, overpopulation, overfishing, clear-cutting, strip mining, sprawl, and countless other threats, we're working to protect every branch -- in fact, every leaf -- on the evolutionary tree".
Want to read more? Navigate here: Centre for Biologocal Diversity and The Sixth Extinction