“Rhino in Malaysia Dies; Species Gone” was a newsbrief in the back of the local paper. It’s not newsworthy anymore. In fact, Earth has lost about 60% of nonhuman vertebrate populations since 1970; most vanish unnoticed and most people don’t give a damn. For the minority capable of sensing the supreme tragedy and outrage of extinction, the name of the last Sumatran Rhino was “Iman.”
Right now more than one million distinct species are at risk of “going the way of the Dodo” ... as the saying goes, as if the demise of the Mauritian bird in 1681 had been something exceptional. Not so.
In fact, we are in the midst of Earth’s sixth mass extinction of plants and nonhumans. It’s the worst run of die-offs since the loss of the Dinosaurs 65 million years ago.
Earth is losing animal species at 1000-10,000 times the “natural” rate of 1-5 species each year. In other words, the number of species that have gone extinct in the last century would have taken 800-10,000 years had they happened at random. At the current tempo, 30-50% of the remaining species may also be gone by 2050.
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| South African Quagga, extinct 1870. Sumatran Rhino, extinct 2019. Tasmanian Tiger, extinct 1933. |
As for mammals, man and its enslaved (farmed) animals are the only populations of “least concern,” actually metastasizing. Others don’t fare so well. Just one-sixth of wild mammals, from mice to elephants remain. In the oceans, only one-fifth of marine mammals survive.
Interestingly, the culprits, 7.600.000.000 humans, are just 0.01% of all life; yet, since the dawn of civilization, we have managed to destroy 83% of wild mammal species. What ice ages and asteroids did in five previous mass extinctions, is happening now at an accelerated rate with man as the principal driver:
Habitat encroachment and destruction for farming, logging, and development is just the begining. What's left of Nature and its denizens man “manages” by hunting/trapping/bottom trawling/selective culling ... introducing invasive species ... wildlife trafficking ... poisoning ... altering DNA ... there is no limit to man's assaults on fellow Earthlings.
As usual, the role of China and its growing assortment of subject states stands out for its ruthless barbarism. Traditional Chinese medicine (TCM) alone is devastating in the imbecillic belief that the rarer the species the greater its healing powers. Every 8 hours on average a Rhino is killed for her or his horn which will command astronomical prices in the Orient for, you guessed it, penis issues.
Even our closest relatives (98.7% of DNA), Bonobos, are fast becoming bushmeat with around 15,000 remaining in the Congo. Iconic species like Polar Bear, Lion, Tiger, Elephant (Asian and African), Giraff, Monarch Butterfly, 23 critically endangered Bat species .... more than 16,000 species and subspecies are in rapid decline. Some are as good as gone, like Orcas with 73 in the ocean, North Carolina Red Wolves with only 18 remaining, or the cetacean Vaquita with14!
Nothing, however, surpasses worldwide animal agriculture in transformative effect. Sit down and consider the fact that farmed poultry today makes up 70% of all birds on the planet, with just 30% of birds in the wild; 60% of all mammals are livestock, mostly Cows and Pigs, 36% are human and ... still seated? ...just 4% are what humans ironically call “wild animals.”
Attrocities pile up in the small rock we share with a dwindling number of populations – each one thinking, bleeding, and essential – persecuted by man for personal gain, a bite of flesh, personal adornment, or just for jollies.
Cosmic justice demands that man go from billions to zero, like the North American Passenger Pidgeon did in 1914 when “Martha” the last of the species died in captivity in the Cinncinnati Zoo.
Extinction is unfathomably tragic. The exception would be the passing of humanity by its own predations. It will happen ... but not soon enough to spare the only planet to sustain life. And if there are others out there, they had better put a big sign: NO HUMANS ALLOWED.
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| After the great slaughter of around 50 million American Bison, only 541 individuals remained alive in 1870. |
P.S. Mad scientists are trying to de-extinct the Wooly Mammoth using Asian Elephant as a DNA host. Only 50,000 Asian Elephants surviving in the wild and rapidly declining ... and we want to bring back the Mammoth at their expense? That’s as twisted as twisted gets. The Dodo, the Carolina Parakeet, the Tasmanian Tiger, the Passenger Pidgeon and others... all are being eyed for de-extinction. Never mind that the landscape that sustained them also disappeared. But man wants them back for the same old reasons: personal gain, gawking, Mastodon roast ... Their eventual extinction v 2.0 be damned.
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