ENVIRONMENT 1 million species under threat of extinction because of humans, biodiversity report finds
S E E D E D C O N T E N T
A sweeping report assessing the state of the natural world found that humans are having an “unprecedented” and devastating effect on global biodiversity, with about 1 million animal and plant species now threatened with extinction.
A summary of the report’s findings was released Monday by the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services, which was established in 2012 by the United Nations Environment Programme and includes representatives from 132 countries.
Robert Watson, the panel’s chair and a professor of environmental sciences at the University of East Anglia in the U.K., said evidence collected over the past five decades from roughly 15,000 scientific and government studies paints “an ominous picture.”
“The health of ecosystems on which we and all other species depend is deteriorating more rapidly than ever,” he said in a statement. “We are eroding the very foundations of our economies, livelihoods, food security, health and quality of life worldwide.”
The report, which did not list individual species, found that 25 percent of mammals, more than 40 percent of amphibian species, nearly 33 percent of sharks and 25 percent of plant groups are threatened with extinction. Based on these proportions, the researchers estimated that approximately 1 million animal and plant species could die out, many “within decades.”
Since the 16th century, humans have driven at least 680 vertebrate species to extinction, including the Pinta Island tortoise. The last known animal of this subspecies, a giant tortoise nicknamed Lonesome George , died at the Galapagos National Park in Ecuador in 2012. A subspecies of the Javan rhino went extinct in 2011 , and the western black rhino and northern white rhino are extinct in the wild, according to the World Wildlife Fund.
“The essential, interconnected web of life on Earth is getting smaller and increasingly frayed,” Josef Settele, the report’s co-chair, said in a statement.
RAPID DETERIORATION
Extinctions have occurred throughout the planet’s history, but the report found that human actions threaten more species now than ever before, with the global rate of species extinction over the past 50 years already “at least tens to hundreds of times higher than it has averaged over the past 10 million years.”
This quickening pace should be cause for alarm, according to David Wagner, a professor of ecology and evolutionary biology at the University of Connecticut, who was not involved with the report.
“It’s happening faster than organisms can respond evolutionarily,” Wagner said. “That means new species generation won’t be able to keep pace with the loss of species.”
This could have serious consequences for the stability of ecosystems around the world, which in turn could directly affect human health, experts say. The interactions between animals, plants, humans and the environment make up a complex web. Disruptions to any part of this biological architecture can have significant, cascading effects.
For instance, humans need food to survive. More than three-quarters of the world’s food crops rely, at least in part, on the activities of bees, wasps, butterflies and other pollinators, according to the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations. The new U.N. report found that 10 percent of insect species are under threat.
“When you lose a species, think of it like a fabric, and you’re taking and plucking one of the strings,” said Brett Scheffers, a conservation ecologist at the University of Florida in Gainesville, who was not involved with the report. “Over time, the fabric gets looser and less stable. These are the types of changes we’re observing where entire ecosystems collapse.”
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What happens when entire food chains breakdown?
Soylant Green.
For all of you too young to know what Soylent Green is, here is a clip to aid you.
I remember it well. And at the rate mankind is killing off the wildlife that the human race depends on for survival in more ways that just a food source, that movie may very well become a fact of life.
Umm.... From soylent.com
Are we sure it's plant protein?
I've been wondering about that since they introduced it.
Hummmmm......
I can see the next major protein product being named "SOY'N'ANT GREEN" after the two main ingredients.
That was a scary movie, Shows a bad possible future. I thought overpopulation was a problem before I saw it,
Very much a cautionary tale. One of the few sci fi of the era that I actually could see becoming our future.
Sometimes I think humans are a plague upon the earth.
Like invasive ants or bacteria. A virus.
There are some people that would kill the last of a species, just to say they did it.
Time to "Nuke" the Human Population so the "Animals and Plants can be saved ?
Seems to me, Even the K-T extinction theory was worse than anything a human could conjure up, and here we still have new plants and animals showing up even now. Creatures come, creatures go, but there will always be creatures at one point or another.
Time to stop thinking that every available piece of land needs to be developed or exploited.
There I agree.
The planet does have its limitations.
Take a few crisscrossing country flights. You'll see Green as far as the eye can see. It just seems like All available spaces are taken up, when mass amounts of Humans congregate in little enclaves for ease of use and for times sake.
Even in my area the spread continues. Once wooded areas are now new subdivisions or strip malls.
The landscape has changed greatly over the decades.
Space IS limited....
The U.S. has Approx. 2.3 billion acres of land mass, with approx. only 66 million acres are hard developed . That is approx. 3 percent of the total land area in the U.S..
We have a looooong way to go yet !
We are not talking about the US alone. The rain forest is still being cut down, (they actually provide most of the earth's 02 and biodiversity). Then there is all the illegal hunting of endangered animals. We could be addressing that.
Which Rain forest ? There are a few on this planet.
I still stick by sprawl because of what I can see happening. We have millions upon millions of acres used just for livestock and feeding them.
Keeping the animals Alive I see !
The percentage of hardscape, compared to Greenscape, is still miniscule compared to the overall area of these united States.
Cut down a Tree, Plant a Tree: "Americans plant approximately 1.6 billion trees every year."
How much "Land would it take up, to turn the entire United States into this total "Green" Dream ?
From what I can tell, the attitude is screw it, it doesn't matter.
There isn't enough money on the planet to make a difference in what the "planet" is going to do with itself.
Hell, we replant, and plant, and plant, and artificially inseminate animals to keep life going all the time.
Animals and plants STILL go extinct all the time. Other species replace those that went extinct. MASSIVE Extinctions have gone on waaaaaay before man even existed. It's the "Cycle of Life" !
One Million Species at Risk of Extinction, Threatening Human Communities Around the World, U.N. Report Warns
99% + of all species has gone extinct since life began on Earth.
I can't believe that supposedly rational and intelligent people actually believe in and worry about such slanted studies.
How are they slanted studies, Greg? We know what the populations of these animals were before and we know what they are now. You need a specific number of animals to maintain healthy stock. This is all fact.
Some posters don't need no stinkin' facts.
The best we can hope for is to minimize our impact as humans. We consume the earths natural resources and basically discharge waste. That's the nature of the beast.
For those that take issue with that feel free to do the earth a favor and end your existence. Since that is more or less the only way for an individual to have a "net positive" impact on Mother Earth.
Well, short of ending one's life, we can try to be mindful. Hunting rare animals to please a few people is not being mindful. Ruining their environments isn't either.
I agree which is what i intended with my first sentence.
That said, it is incredibly arrogant IMO when we tell other nations what they can and can't do with the natural resources in their lands. I'm all for conservation and encouraging it whenever possible but i stop at forcing it.
In the end it really isn't any of our business. Wars have started over less.