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This is so sad. All of these species so close to extinction. For each one of these species that is lost the world is a poorer place. And it need not have been this way.
OTOH- just as it is the fate of all individuals to die, it is the fate of all species to go extinct. On close inspection, species are not gong extinct any faster now than they ever were. The "Great Extinctions" of the past were episodes where whole genera and higher classifications were suddenly lost. That is not happening now at all.
Species that are highly adapted to limited environments are usually doomed to failure sooner than the generalist species. It is not generally true that those specialists are sources of genes that may have future adaptive advantage; it is usually the generalists that serve as those reservoirs.
Save your tears for things that count. Buy some acreage to save it from the bulldozer. Save ecosystems, not species.
This is so sad. All of these species so close to extinction. For each one of these species that is lost the world is a poorer place. And it need not have been this way.
OTOH- just as it is the fate of all individuals to die, it is the fate of all species to go extinct. On close inspection, species are not gong extinct any faster now than they ever were. The "Great Extinctions" of the past were episodes where whole genera and higher classifications were suddenly lost. That is not happening now at all.
Species that are highly adapted to limited environments are usually doomed to failure sooner than the generalist species. It is not generally true that those specialists are sources of genes that may have future adaptive advantage; it is usually the generalists that serve as those reservoirs.
Save your tears for things that count. Buy some acreage to save it from the bulldozer. Save ecosystems, not species.
^^^False. These species are not going extinct through normal geologic events, they are going
extinct because humans are using elephants, tigers, rhinos...for crazy medicinal practices and
trophy hunting.
The "lifetime" of a species is on the order of 10^6 yrs, so we would expect ~ 10^7 / 10^6 = 10^1 to go extinct every year. That's on the right order of magnitude-- 10 per yr. According to this article Willis Eschenbach and the Myth of the we've only lost ~ 0.4species per year over the last 500 yrs.
In fact, we're finding new species faster than we're losing old ones---- obviously proof for the Creationists' argument.
As far as buying land goes, I wonder how many hundreds of thousands of acres of rainforest could have been bought with the money wasted by the partially educated on such stupid things as Al Gore's Inconvenient Truth movie, not to mention travel & entertainment expenses for all the dignitaries at the "Climate Conferences?"
edited to add, lest you think me some sort of heathen-- hunting needs to be regulated according to good population management science. With diminishing habitat, we need to keep the predator population size limited in order to preserve the balance. Besides the disgraceful superstitious requirements for certain animal by-products, you have the dingenuous hunting of whales for "science." What's up with that?
Last edited by guidoLaMoto; 09-23-2017 at 11:13 AM..
"With devastation wrought by habitat loss, climate change, pollution and overfishing, new research suggests that as much as half of the wildlife in Canada could be dying off at alarming rates.
A total of 451 species in decline — roughly half of the total mammals, birds, fish, reptiles and amphibians studied as part of the World Wildlife Fund Canada’s Living Index, released Thursday — saw their population decline by an average of 83 per cent between 1970 and 2014...... continued ....."
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Half of Canada's wildlife in decline
