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| tasmanian tigers are long gone |
A frightening new study has been published by Science journal. It would appear that, despite strong efforts on a lot of fronts, 1 in 5 animal species are threatened with extinction. Amphibians are the worst off because no one seems to care much about them. They're not as much fun to get outraged over as rhinos and panda bears, but who doesn't love frogs?
In an NPR story this morning, Duke ecology professor Stuart Pimm said, "Species extinction is rather like death and taxes. They are an inevitable part of life, but you just don't want them to happen at too great a rate." He goes on to reveal that animals are dying off at approximately 1000 times the historical rate. In other words, some extinction is normal and natural - This ain't.
You don't have to quit driving your car or never turn your a/c on to think that cutting down rainforests in order to build palm oil plantations, for example, is not such a good deal. Can't everyone agree that we want to have cool creatures running around the planet? Diplomats, conservation biologists, and Han Solo are meeting in Japan to discuss whether everyone's pulling their weight in slowing down the rate of extinction and trying to figure out what else can be done. Hope it works out for them...and us.
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| Costa Rica's golden toad = no mas |
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| baiji - Chinese river dolphin, declared extinct in 2006 |
