Current Events #4 - Global Extinction Crisis!!

Link: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/10/26/AR2010102607146.html?tid=wp_featuredstories

Author: Juliet Eilperin

Extinction is becoming more and more of a problem nowadays. One fifth of all vertebrates and almost a third of all rays and sharks are facing the threat of extinction. This is according to a survey that assessed almost 26,000 species across the earth. As well as that, things such as habitat destruction, invasive species, and over-exploitation are growing and are moving about 50 species closer to extinction each year. The senior vice president for science and knowledge at the organization Conservation International, Andrew Rosenberg, says that this is very urgent. According to him, what must be done is “We need to focus on protected areas, both terrestrial and marine. This survey, conducted by 174 researchers from 38 countries, will be used as a meeting topic as representatives around the world will go to meet in Nagoya, Japan. They will debate conservation goals there for the coming decade, so that the extinction rate goes down. However, there is a problem – a third of the habitable land on Earth was transformed into a place for food production. Removing this habitat might create some serious consequences for biodiversity.

This article was interesting to me mainly because of my invasive species presentation. There is actually more to the article talking about how invasive species affects extinction, and this helped me understand a lot of the negative effects of invasive species for my presentation. I thought it was really scary that we’re now in a position that we can’t back out of so easily – if we take away what’s been causing all of these Earth-related problems, then we create biodiversity problems and make it a lot harder for humans as a species to live. Before, when the food industries and the factories and all of these things that create pollution or take up space were only just created, it would have probably been possible to take them out of our life again. However, now it is nearly impossible – so some people are even thinking of it as a matter of the survival of the human race or the survival of the earth.