Mass Extinction
National parks in India and Nepal hit by rhino poachers
The rare Indian rhinoceros is not safe from poachers even in national parks.
In Nepal's world renowned Royal Chitwan National Park, twenty-four Indian rhinos (Rhinoceros unicornis) have been poached since the last census was taken in 2008. The most recent one was killed last Thursday. Approximately 372 Indian rhinos survive in the park, and the population is in decline.
Why we are failing orangutans
It is no secret that orangutans are threatened with extinction because their rain forests are being destroyed at an alarming rate. Ten years ago, Shawn Thompson, a writer, former journalist and university professor, set out to chronicle the threat to orangutans in a book released in March 2010. The book is called The Intimate Ape: Orangutans and the Secret Life of a Vanishing Species. The book spends most of the time talking about the nature of orangutans and the relationships between orangutans and people. But the ultimate underlying message is there about the source of the peril to orangutans and the solution. Thompson says that the problem of saving orangutans has to do with communications and human nature.
AN INTERVIEW WITH SHAWN THOMPSON
Mongabay: Why do you say the problem has to do with communications and human nature?
Shawn Thompson: We already have more than enough information to know what the problem is and how to save orangutans. But the information stays locked within a relatively small group, mainly scientists and environmentalists, who are a kind of small subculture on the planet. This group tries to communicate by being very sensible and rational, but the message doesn’t get across. The general population doesn’t realize what orangutans are and that they are much closer to extinction than gorillas and chimpanzees. The scientists and environmentalists communicate how they know best, in a sensible and rational way, as though they are talking to their own subculture. But they are talking across cultural lines to a mass audience, which listens and behaves in a different way. So I wrote the book to try and break through that. I went back to basic issues that move a popular mass audience and tried to write a book that would appeal to hearts and minds, to have people fall in love with orangutans, which then becomes the “reason” for saving orangutans, the incentive. We need to feel that orangutans are part of our family. And, of course, in terms of evolution and genetics they are.
Half the planet's primates 'threatened with extinction'
In total, close to half of the planet's 634 known primate species are to some degree threatened with dying out, according to research by the International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN) and other conservation and research groups.
That percentage has risen quickly - only three years ago the IUCN put the ratio of vulnerable primates at one third.
"Primates are among the most endangered of all vertebrate groups," said Russell Mittermeier, head of the IUCN's primate specialist group.
Of the top 25, five are on the island of Madagascar, six on the African continent, three in South America and 11 in Southeast Asia.
The least likely to survive might well be the golden-headed langur of Vietnam, found exclusively on the island of Cat Ba in the Gulf of Tonkin. Only 60 to 70 individuals remain.
Two other species hover in number at around 100: the northern sportive lemur of Madagascar, and the eastern black crested gibbon of northern Vietnam.
Human encroachment has reduced the population of cross river gorillas, found in the mountains along the Cameroon-Nigeria border, to less than 300.
How to Stop the Ongoing Loss of Species
By David Biello Species of plants, animals and other categories of living things are disappearing. And millions of people still live in extreme poverty. But is there a connection? For example, is the ongoing destruction of the Indonesian rainforest driven by the economic development of Indonesians? Or is the global demand for wood products to blame? Is it a combination? Or are there other factors that are more important? The bad news is that answer isn’t clear. And the worse news is that the world's countries have not lived up to their pledge under the Convention on Biological Diversity to reduce the rate of species loss by 2010.
One reason for that failure: no one has agreed on what are true indicators of whether biodiversity is being preserved or lost. So argues Matt Walpole of the United Nations Environment Programme in this week's issue of the journal Science.
Mass Extinction Underway, Majority of Biologists Say
A majority of the nation's biologists are convinced that a "mass extinction" of plants and animals is underway that poses a major threat to humans in the next century, yet most Americans are only dimly aware of the problem, a poll says.
The rapid disappearance of species was ranked as one of the planet's gravest environmental worries, surpassing pollution, global warming and the thinning of the ozone layer, according to the survey of 400 scientists commissioned by New York's American Museum of Natural History.
The poll's release yesterday comes on the heels of a groundbreaking study of plant diversity that concluded than at least one in eight known plant species is threatened with extinction. Although scientists are divided over the specific numbers, many believe that the rate of loss is greater now than at any time in history.
