Last chance to see…
Friday, August 10th, 2007 by Nigel
Species extinctions are news this week with reports that the Baiji dolphin that lived in the Yangtze River is now, apparently, no longer an inhabitant of planet Earth.
You can listen to what it sounded like on baiji.org.
It’s the first extinct large vertebrate in 50 years, but it’s unlikely to hold that title for long. There are only two Northern White Rhino left.
The scary statistic is that we now appear to be seeing mass species extinctions at a rate that some scientists believe is comparable to the biggest mass extinction on record - which, scientists hypothesise happened when a giant meteorite smashed into the earth 65 million years ago.
The World Conservation Union - the IUCN - which maintains the Red List of endangered species goes further than that. It prefaced its last list with the warning:
Recent extinction rates far exceed the rates of extinction in the fossil record. Extinction rates based on known extinctions of birds, mammals and amphibians over the past 100 years indicates that current extinction rates are 50 to 500 times higher than extinction rates in the fossil record. If Possibly Extinct species are included, this increases to 100 to 1,000 times natural (background) extinction rates. This is an extremely conservative estimate, as it does not account for undocumented extinctions. Although the estimates vary greatly, it appears that current extinction rates are at least two to four orders of magnitude above background rates.
This site, dedicated to Douglas Adam’s documentary Last Chance To See is good…
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