06 October 2008

But not the most dangerous one, unfortunately

The New York Times has a disheartening story:
An 'extinction crisis' is under way, with one in four mammals in danger of disappearing because of habitat loss, hunting and climate change, a leading global conservation body warned.
“Within our lifetime, hundreds of species could be lost as a result of our own actions,” said Julia Marton-Lefèvre, the director general of the International Union for Conservation of Nature, an international network of campaign groups, governments, scientists and other experts.
Among 188 mammals in the highest threat category — critically endangered — was the Iberian lynx, which has a population of 84 to 143 adults and has continued to decline for lack of its primary prey, the European rabbit, which has fallen victim to disease and overhunting.
Other mammals highlighted in the report included the fishing cat, found in Southeast Asia. The cat was moved to the second most threatened category, endangered, from vulnerable, because of habitat loss in wetlands. The Caspian seal, also now endangered, has seen its population decline by 90 percent over the past 100 years because of unsustainable hunting and degradation of its habitats.
“What we’ve found is that one in four mammals are truly in peril, but these assessments were done largely without accounting for the potential impacts of climate change,” said Jonathan Baillie, the director of conservation programs at the Zoological Society of London.
“If we continue emitting greenhouse gases at the current rate, we’re looking at 40 percent loss of biodiversity by the end of the century,” warned Dr. Baillie, referring to the potential extinction of all species.
Rico says he once wrote a poem, and translated it into German, because it sounded better that way and he was taking German at the time:
Wie erkenntlich ich wurden
Zu geboren werden
In diesem Menschenalter
Für ich will Todt sein
Wenn Mann macht seinen Raub des Erdes fertig
Und, in wegwenden, sterbt.
That would be, if memory serves me:
How thankful I am
to have been born
in this generation
for I will be dead
when Man finishes his rape of the Earth and,
in turning away, dies.

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