Mass Extinction
History repeats itself: the path to extinction is still paved with greed and waste
As a child I read about the near-extinction of the American bison. Once the dominant species on America's Great Plains, I remember books illustrating how train-travelers would set their guns on open windows and shoot down bison by the hundreds as the locomotive sped through what was left of the wild west. The American bison plunged from an estimated 30 million to a few hundred at the opening of the 20th century.
When I read about the bison's demise I remember thinking, with the characteristic superiority of a child, how such a thing could never happen today, that society has, in a word, 'progressed'.
Grown-up now, the world has made me wiser: last month the international organization CITES (Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species) struck down a ban on the Critically Endangered Atlantic bluefin tuna. The story of the Atlantic bluefin tuna is a long and mostly irrational one—that is if one looks at the Atlantic bluefin from a scientific, ecologic, moral, or common-sense perspective.
Gorillas in the list: New extinction fears for central African gorillas
Illegal logging, the bushmeat trade, mining, the charcoal
trade and a new strain of the Ebola
virus could drive gorillas into extinction in central Africa in as
little as 15 years, according to a new report from the U.N. and
Interpol.
Three of the four gorilla subspecies are already considered critically endangered, and the fourth is listed as endangered on the IUCN Red List of Threatened Species.
Previous assessments by the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) predicted that only 10 percent of gorilla habitat would remain undisturbed by 2032. UNEP now says that date was overly optimistic, and gorillas could lose their habitat entirely in as little as a decade. The danger to gorillas is "especially critical in the eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC)," according to the report, due to ongoing conflicts and roaming militias, which are responsible for much for the illegal trade in the area.
Mass Extinction Hallmark of New Age of Geologic Time, The Age of Man, The Anthropocene Epoch
The Age of Aquarius? Not quite -- It's the Anthropocene Epoch, say
the scientists writing in the journal Environmental Science &
Technology.
And they add that the dawning of this new epoch may include the sixth largest mass extinction in Earth's history.
Jan Zalasiewicz and Mark Williams from the University of Leicester Department of Geology; Will Steffen, Director of the Australian National University's Climate Change Institute and Paul Crutzen the Nobel Prize-winning atmospheric chemist of Mainz University provide evidence for the scale of global change in their commentary in the American Chemical Society's' bi-weekly journal Environmental Science & Technology.
The scientists propose that, in just two centuries, humans have wrought such vast and unprecedented changes to our world that we actually might be ushering in a new geological time interval, and alter the planet for millions of years.
Witness the terrible destruction of Borneo's rainforest
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Extinction outpaces evolution
Extinctions are currently outpacing the capacity for new species to evolve, according to Simon Stuart, chair of the Species Survival Commission for the International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN).
"Measuring the rate at which new species evolve is difficult, but there's no question that the current extinction rates are faster," Stuart told the Guardian.
He added that E.O, Wilsons' estimate that the extinction rate could rise to 10,000 times the background rate would likely prove prescient.
