Threatened species Red List shows escalating 'global extinction crisis'

[go west young man]

Source: Gaurdian UK

Corals and seaweed have joined the ranks of threatened species, and more apes and reptiles are now facing extinction according to the World Conservation Union, which warns of a "global extinction crisis".

The conservation group's annual Red List of threatened species, published today, found that the extinction crisis had escalated in the last year with 16,306 species now at the highest levels of extinction threat, equivalent to almost 40% of all species in the survey.

A quarter of all mammals, a third of all amphibians and one in eight birds on the 2007 IUCN Red List are in jeopardy.



Read more: http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2007/sep/12/internationalnews.greenpolitics

[hang a left]

1. READ THE ARTICLE!!

The site wouldn't let me cut and paste.

Well, I take that back. If you don't want to get totally depressed, don't read the article.

"We are at Code Red".

[emilyg]

2. Totally depressed.

:cry:

[Mojorabbit]

3. kicking

to mark to read in the am. I can't keep my eyes open

[rodeodance]

4. The Gharial crocodile has been uplisted from "endangered" to "critically endangered" following

Corals were assessed and added to the Red List for the first time, and two corals found in the Galapagos have entered the list in the "critically endangered" category and one in the "vulnerable" category. The rise in sea temperature caused by the effects of El Niño and climate change are identified as the main threats.

Ocean warming also threatens seaweeds around the islands, with 10 classified as critically endangered, six of which are highlighted as "possibly extinct". The seaweeds are also affected by overfishing which removes predators from the food chain, resulting in an increase in sea urchins, which overgraze the algae.

Gorillas and orangutans face a particularly grim future after the discovery that more than 60% of Western Lowland Gorillas in Africa have been wiped out by the Ebola virus and the commercial bushmeat trade, and forest clearance for oil palm plantations, along with illegal logging, continue to seriously threaten the survival of orangutans in Sumatra and Borneo.

The Gharial crocodile has been uplisted from "endangered" to "critically endangered" following the discovery that there are less than 200 breeding adults left in the wild. The report said that excessive irreversible habitat loss in Nepal and India following the construction of dams and irrigation canals had wiped out more than half the crocodile's population in the last decade.

[hang a left]

5. How did you do that??

It wouldn't let me cut and paste.

Maybe I am a retard.

[Lorien]

6. K&R

Every ecological system in the world is in decline, yet profit is still Lord and Master over our entire species...and now it has placed every other species on earth at risk. The death of birth is on our doorstep. It is time to Wake Up and Act.

[Dead_Parrot]

7. K&R

So everybody else can be depressed. :(

[ozymandius]

8. from the article

Vultures in Africa and Asia are among the most endangered birds with five species, including the Red-headed Vulture and the Egyptian Vulture, reclassified this year. Lack of food, due to habitat loss, a reduction in grazing mammals and the increasing use of drugs to treat livestock are to blame for the vultures' rapid decline.

The Red List examines just over 40,000 species, around 12% of the 15m species in the world.

Around 70% of the world's assessed plants are on the 2007 Red List. The Woolly-stalked Begonia, a Malaysian herb, was the only species declared extinct this year bringing the total number of extinct species to 785. A further 65 species now exist only in captivity.

[MatrixEscape]

9. Maybe we are on the verge of something ....

Maybe its very bad or a form of evolution we don't understand and are not willing to grapple with. After all, we are what seems to be a complex result of this process.

If people are getting depressed about this and realize what this kind of critical threshold holds for our own survival and evolution as a species, then being morose about it is not practical.

What is more upsetting is that it appears that we would ALL have to make rapid shifts in our ideas, desires, modus operandi, lifestyles, purpose, etc. That means right now and in broad, sweeping ways.

It is as if the bell has tolled and it has tolled for each one of us, our children, our species, and what are we going to do ... get depressed because we are comfortable with the way things are? More realistically, the way we have accepted the way things should be.

Perhaps everything that is going on, including the role of the Dominators is bringing us to a make-or-break point from which there is no turning back. That is not gloom and doom, that is a synopsis of the social and natural dynamics we can literally see now.

[go west young man]

10. Link to the Red List site with PDF data.

http://www.iucnredlist.org/info/stats

[AdHocSolver]

11. Let's get realistic - It isn't the "people" who are causing this, but those who run the...

multinational corporations. They are using up the planet's fossil fuel supplies, causing global climate change, producing and dumping huge amounts of toxic waste, producing gas-guzzling vehicles (when the technology exists NOW to improve gas mileage), and genetically modifying plants and animals in ways that are undermining the ecological balance that took "nature" thousands to millions of years to develop.

We are but bit players in a movie. The "producers" provide the set, the dialog, the plot, choose the director, and the leading actors. We do our part to get "crumbs" to survive. There is only one realistic way to influence the outcome of the story. That is to elect a majority to government that will rein in the greed and madness of the powers that be.