Here’s the link,
I don’t know what to think.
On one hand, if this actually happened, then it would be a tragedy.
On the other hand, this article is so full of hyperbole, that I find it hard to believe.
They mention several times that these habitats are “unprotected”. Well, who was protecting these habitats before humans came around, and up to this point?
On the contrary - these are the vertebrate species extinctions we know about. There are likely very many more we don’t, not to mention the literally thousands of insect/plant/plankton extinctions occuring every decade.
The point is that without human interference the ecosystem remains in equilibrium. The trouble with human activity is that it changes the characteristics of massive tracts of land very quickly. It seems a little harsh to suggest that a tree-dwelling creature might “adapt to its environment” when you’ve just chopped down all the trees in a hundred mile radius within six months, depleted the soil so much that grasslands become desert within a generation, or overfished to the point where the entire food chain is thrown into chaos.
Every year numerous new drugs and treatments based on natural products *eg.*deep in the Amazon become available. Species conservation should occur *even from a *selfish perspective.
A lot more than 700 species are at risk. These are just some of the better-understood examples.
No one was protecting these habitats before humans came around. No one was threatening them, either.
Before humans came around, there was no need to protect the habitats. We are the enemy.
On the other hand, species have been dying out since time began. It’s part of nature. We are hastening it, no doubt, but if nothing died out, wouldn’t it be a bit crowded on this here planet?
That’s true. After all, before humans entered the picture mass extinctions on earth were unheard of.
Marc
“Hey, lots of people died before I ran that bus full of orphans off the side of the bridge. Why should I be considered responsible?”
I remember from Environment Science 101, that there have been 12 mass extinctions on this planet.
The equilibrium that is spoken of includes the routine extinctions of species. Call it a “Market Correction”, but I jest.
Yes, the environment changes naturally over long periods of time. However, human activity changes enormous areas very quickly.
For humans to be directly responsible for only the 13th mass extinction in one billion years would possibly be our most morally reprehensible legacy imaginable.
Almost Marc. Apparently there was a mega extinction 250 million years ago over an 80,000 year period in which 95% of all life on earth died. It’s called the Permean Extinction. This was way, WAY before dinosaurs and whales and dolphins. There is speculation that a cow like mammal called the “listosaurus” survived, from which all mammals (including us) eventually evolved. My point here is that it’s taken at least 65 million years, and probably 250 million years for the flora and fauna as we know it today to evolve.
And THAT is where the sadness comes in. I’m told that for every extra billion humans on the planet, as a rule of thumb, you can safely kiss goodbye at least 10,000 species of animal life - that is, birds, marine life, insects, mammals, and reptiles. They all suffer sadly.
For those who seem to think this is all no big deal, here is a review article from Nature about this subject.
For the average person, it’s hard for many to see the effects. IMO the difficulty in the ability to feel directly impacted by the changing environment is a prime reason for the current day apathy. As I understand it the loss of animal and plant life is occurring primarily in Africa and South America. Countries in these continents have an interest in using their natural resources for economic purposes in order to obtain the standard of living western democracies currently enjoy. What is a practical, reasonable way to convince the populace of those countries to NOT try to better their economy?
Protected from humans. Human activity - deforestation, habitat alteration, hunting, etc. - is overwhelmingly the most important threat to the survival of the species in question. The vast majority of them would not be threatened by extinctions if humans weren’t destroying their habitats.
“Protected” in this case means that the species is found within a national park, wildlife refuge, etc. “Unprotected” means that it is only known to occur in areas without any formal legal protection.
I just completed a technical analysis of exactly this kind for the birds of Panama. I found that although many threatened species were found in protected areas, others were not.
I also found that the loss of a few thousand more acres of forest in one area of Panama will cause probably a dozen species of birds from the country. These species have already lost 99.9 percent of their range in Panama through deforestation, and none of their range in Panama is protected. (Although these species would continue to survive in Costa Rica, which is the only other country where most of them occur, they are threatened by deforestation there as well.)
As others have said, it is not hyperbole, it is probably a gross understatement.
Previous mass extinctions were due to asteroid impacts, massive volcanic eruptions, etc. You happen to notice any of that going on at the moment?
Since you’re obviously being sarcastic, what’s your point? Because mass extinctions have occurred before due to natural causes, we shouldn’t be concerned because humans are causing one now? Or are you trying to imply that the current mass extinction is coincidental, and humans have nothing to do with it?
Yes, “equilibrium” includes the “routine” extinction of species (the “background extinction rate”) but we are way out of equilibrium now: the extinction rate vastly exceeds the evolutionary rate for the creation rate of new species - which should balance each other if things are actually in equilibrium.
From here:
That ain’t no market correction; it’s a market crash that makes the one in 1929 look like a tiny blip.
The thing is; does this mass extinction affect humans in any measurable way? If it doesn’t, why should be care about it.
One thing to think about is the assumption that extinctions caused by humans are necessarily a bad thing. Nature tends toward equilibrium, true, but it is not always the same equilibrium. An ecosystem that is stable can have a superior predator move into the area, and it will be changed as certain prey die out, and maybe even some predators will die from lack of food. Nevertheless, stability will return to the environment.
There are basically two ways of thinking about humankind; that we are advanced animals and part of the world ecosystem, or that we are a superior and separate type of being and merely living among animals.
For the first school of thought, the argument that we are intruding and ruining an ecosystem is ludicrous. We are part of the world ecosystem; it is evolution in action if the inferior animals cannot compete. We are intelligent enough to decide if we want to keep them around for a specific purpose, but characterizing their extinction as immoral is hypocritical.
If you think of humans are a separate, higher form of being then you probably don’t have any problem with the extinction of species. If you do, ask yourself why. Animals die all the time, for various different reasons. Most of them have to do with their inability to cope with the environment, be it a fast animal with big teeth or an SUV with large tires. Why should we care if it is a certain type of animal that is dying rather than a different type?
Maybe they could charge the rest of us an air tax? They could make money that way instead of building their own economy.
Marc
**
What does the cause matter? The point is that life managed to hang on each and every time.
My point is that the environment doesn’t really need to be protected from humans in the way Kalhoun seems to think. I’m not really all that concerned about mass extinction as I don’t see it as a threat to human life. I can get worked up over air and water pollution as well as overfishing but I imagine there are a lot of species that could go extinct without any effect on the quality of our lives.
Marc
To be honest, it kind of amazes me that it comes down to this for you guys. I.e., that it doesn’t matter unless it affects us humans very directly. But, be that as it may, the Nature article I linked to talks a fair bit about the ways in which the altered biodiversity (with the extinctions being one part of this) does affect us in the section entitled “Society Consequences of Altered Biodiversity”:
It goes on to give examples and talk in more detail about this.
I can only concur with SentientMeat. Out of sheer self-preservation we are obliged to make some reasonable effort to acommodate all other species on the planet. An odd little yam from the aforementioned Amazonian rainforest just happened to yield the prototype pseudo-hormones for oral contraceptives. Consider the implications of that one single medical discovery. A huge percentage of all new bio-pharmaceuticals come from the Amazon. How much more of it shall we slash and burn?
Yet, please consider a very mundane discovery. A biologist working with frogs would routinely perform open surgery on his subjects, stitch them back up and toss them into their muddy tanks. He began to notice that very few of the frogs ever became infected. After investigating, it was found that frogs (in general) have a fabulous complex of anti-fungal and anti-bacterial secretions in their skin. These secretions are currently being investigated as a powerful new antibiotic drug.
Which species do we let go extinct? The one that holds a cure for AIDS, cancer, multiple sclerosis … (need I continue)? At the very least we must begin a multinational effort to catalog and house biological material from around the world. We are rapidly extinguishing a vast legacy of nature’s adaptation across the aeons. It is literally as if we are heating our house by burning the furniture.
I am a devout capitalist, but the profits from discovering a single one of these vital biopharmaceuticals could easily outweigh the entire value of a world timber crop. The alleviation of human suffering goes light years beyond the money. It is precisely these reasons that cause me to advocate preservation of all old growth forests in the United States and the sustainable harvesting of large trees worldwide. Domestic replanting of trees has created a monoculture of Douglas fir that is engineered to grow so fast that it doesn’t even have a straight grain (no lumber, suitable only for plywood). Again, by reforesting with a single species, what miraculous possibilities have already been lost? It’s not as if we have anywhere near even 50% of the earth’s species cataloged in the first place.
This is a priceless heritage that we are squandering. Once again, our biosphere is uniquely suited to provide assimilable chemistries for the human body. What survives today, is the byproduct of untold millennia of winnowing and specialization. The survival mechanisms (as seen in the frogs) have been fine-tuned far beyond what we could hope to duplicate through organic synthesis and subsequent (long term) testing. We have had this magnificent medicine chest thrust into our hands and we are wiping our posteriors with the bandages contained therein.
This must cease immediately.