Bigger Threat Than Global Warming: Mass Species Extinction

• Biocide is occurring at an alarming rate. Experts say that at least half of the world’s current species will be completely gone by the end of the century. Wild plant-life is also disappearing. Most biologists say that we are in the midst of an anthropogenic mass extinction. Numerous scientific studies confirm that this phenomenon is real and happening right now. Should anyone really care? Will it impact individuals on a personal level? Scientists say, “Yes!”
• Critics argue that species disappear and new ones emerge all the time. That’s true, if you’re speaking in terms of millennia. Scientists acknowledge that species disappear at an estimated rate of one species per million per year, with new species replacing the lost ones at around the same rate. Recently humans have accelerated the extinction rate to where several entire species are annihilated every single day. The death toll artificially caused by humans is mind-boggling. Nature will take millions of years to repair what we destroy in just a few decades.
• A recent analysis, published in the journal Nature, shows that it takes 10 million years before biological diversity even begins to approach what existed before a die-off. Over 10,000 scientists in the World Conservation Union have compiled data showing that currently 51 per cent of known reptiles, 52 per cent of known insects, and 73 per cent of known flowering plants are in danger along with many mammals, birds and amphibians. It is likely that some species will become extinct before they are even discovered, before any medicinal use or other important features can be assessed. The cliché movie plot where the cure for cancer is about to be annihilated is more real than anyone would like to imagine.
• Research done by the American Museum of Natural History found that the vast majority of biologists believe that mass extinction poses a colossal threat to human existence, and is even more serious of an environmental problem than one of its contributors- global warming. The research also found that the average person woefully underestimates the dangers of mass extinction. Powerful industrial lobbies would like people to believe that we can survive while other species are quickly and quietly dying off. Irresponsible governments and businesses would have people believe that we don’t need a healthy planet to survive- even while human cancer rates are tripling every decade.
• A lot of us heard about the recent extinction of the Yangtze river dolphin. It was publicized because dolphins are cute and smart, and we like dolphins. We were sort of sad that we humans were single-handedly responsible for destroying the entire millions-of-years-old species in just a few years through rampant pollution. Unfortunately the real death toll is so much higher than we hear on the news. Only a few endangered “celebrity favorites” get any notice at all.
• Since animals and plants exist in symbiotic relationships to one another, extinction of one species is likely to cause ”co-extinctions”. Some species directly affect the health of hundreds of other species. There is always some kind of domino effect. This compounding process occurs with frightening speed. That makes rampant extinction similar too disease in the way that it spreads. Sooner or later- if gone unchecked- humans may catch it too. Amphibians are a prime example at how tinkering with the environment can cause rapid animal death. For over 300 million years frogs, salamanders, newts and toads were hardy enough to precede and outlive the dinosaurs up until the present time. Now, within just two decades many amphibians are disappearing. Scientists are alarmed at how one seemingly robust species of amphibians will suddenly disappear within a few months. The causes of biocide are a hodge-podge of human environmental “poisons” which often work synergistically, including a vast array of pollutants, pesticides, a thinning ozone layer which increases ultra-violet radiation, human induced climate change, habitat loss from agriculture and urban sprawl, invasions of exotic species introduced by humans, illegal and legal wildlife trade, light pollution, and man-made borders among other many other causes.
• Is there a way out? The answer is yes and no. We’ll never regain the lost biodiversity-at least not within a fathomable time period, but there are ways to prevent a worldwide bio collapse, but they all require immediate action. The eminent Harvard biologist Edward O Wilson, and other scientists point out that the world needs international cooperation in order to sustain ecosystems, since nature is unaware of artificially drawn borders. Humans love to fence off space they’ve claimed as their own. Sadly, a border fence often has terrible ecological consequences. One fence between India and Pakistan cuts off bears and leopards from their feeding habitats, which is causing them to starve to death. Starvation leads to attacks on villagers, and more slaughtering of the animals.
• Some of the most endangered wildlife species live right in between the borderland area of the US and Mexico. These indigenous animals don’t know that they now live between two countries. They were here long before the people came and nations divided, but they will not survive if we cut them off fromtheir habitat. The Sky Islands is one of many areas smack in the middle of this boundary where some of North America's most threatened wildlife is found. Jaguars, bison, and Wolves have to cross through international terrain in the course of their life's travels in order to survive. Unfortunately, illegal Mexican workers cross here too. People who know nothing of the wildlife’s biological needs want to create a large fence to keep out Mexicans, regardless of the fact that a fence would devastate these already fragile animal populations. Wilson says the time has come to start calling the "environmentalist view" the "real-world view". We can’t ignore reality simply because it doesn’t conform nicely within convenient boundaries and moneymaking strategies. What good will all of our money and conveniences do for us, if we collectively destroy the necessities of life?
• There is hope, but it requires radical changes. Many organizations are lobbying for that change. One group trying to salvage ecosystems is called The Wildlands Project, a conservation group spearheading the drive to reconnect the remaining wildernesses. The immediate goal is to reconnect wild North America in four broad "mega-linkages". Within each mega-linkage, mosaics of public and private lands, which would provide safe migrations for wildlife, would connect core areas. Broad, vegetated overpasses would link wilderness areas normally split by roads. They will need cooperation from local landowners and government agencies. It is a radical vision to many people, and the Wildlands Project expects that it will take at least 100 years to complete. Even so, projects like this, on a worldwide basis, may be humanity’s best chance of saving what’s left of the planets eco-system, and the human race along with it.

Famous Caymans coral reefs dying

Ranked among the top 10 scuba diving destinations in the world, the reef system of the western Caribbean territory has lost 50 percent of its hard corals in the last 10 years in spite of strong environmental laws, scientists say.

"We are at a very critical time in the history of coral reefs," said Carrie Manfrino, president of the Central Caribbean Marine Institute on Little Cayman island."It is like working with a sick patient. How well we treat that patient will determine if that patient survives. We could potentially see the end of hard coral reefs in our lifetime."

Global warming is heating sea water, which leads to coral bleaching, an ailment that causes normally colorful corals to turn white, and white plague, a disease sweeping and killing coral around the world.

"If the coral reef dies, the algae will go, and the tropical fish will go. Then there will be nothing left to see," says Nancy Easterbrook, operator of Divetech. Manfrino said hope is not lost. "We can't give up," she said. "Science is always coming up with major discoveries, so we may find a way to save our reefs."

Man vomits drugs, plane turns around

A passenger on an Australian-bound plane vomited a nylon bag of white powder suspected to be heroin, causing the plane to return to Vietnam in the latest drug mule case between that country and Australia, officials said. The Vietnam Airlines plane had been flying for an hour after leaving Ho Chi Minh City on Saturday when an Australian man of Vietnamese descent took ill, airline officials told the state-run Tuoi Tre (Youth) newspaper. The aircraft turned around and made an emergency landing at Tan Son Nhat Airport, where the man coughed up two more bags of white powder. He was detained by police and taken to hospital.

Malaysia plans to pour away 196,000 smuggled beers

Malaysian customs officials plan to send more than 196,000 cans of smuggled beer gurgling down the drain after confiscating them from a gang that specialized in reselling duty-free drinks to pubs and grocers. Officials cannot auction off the beer, worth about 287,000 ringgit ($84,040) with 1 million ringgit ($292,900) owed in unpaid duty and sales tax, because the sale would affect the domestic market, the Star newspaper said Tuesday. The smugglers worked with freight forwarders and haulers over six months to obtain duty-free beers meant for shops in Hong Kong, Singapore and Malaysia, customs officials told the paper. Each of the 8,178 seized cartons was to have been sold for 30 ringgit, or about a third of the market price, customs official Madrina Alwi said.

Lawmakers brawl in parliament, again

Scores of Taiwan legislators sprayed water, threw stacks of paper and exchanged punches in parliament Tuesday due to disagreements over a bill, again delaying passage of the long-overdue 2007 annual budget. Lawmakers from the ruling Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) and the main opposition Nationalist Party, or the Kuomintang (KMT), climbed onto the parliament speaker's podium, wrestled and pulled at each other's clothes. At least one legislator fell from the table during the scuffle, which broke out over a proposal by the KMT to adjust the make-up of the Central Election Commission. DPP legislators complained that the KMT had introduced its election commission plan to derail passage of the annual budget.

Motorists drove around dead body on road

More than two dozen Israeli motorists maneuvered around the dead body of a road accident victim lying in the middle of a busy intersection, failing to stop to help in an incident captured by a traffic camera. In footage broadcast by Israeli television stations on Monday and in a series of photographs on newspaper front pages, motorcyclist Moshe Yisraeli was seen trying to squeeze between two trucks at a junction on a highway near Tel Aviv Sunday. He never made it. The camera captured his body lying near the centre of the four-way intersection, his motorcycle meters away on its side. Some 30 cars and trucks slowed down and then carefully drove around the prone motorcylist in a stream of traffic that continued for nearly two minutes before a driver stopped his vehicle and approached the body.

Huge star explodes in brightest supernova yet seen

A gargantuan explosion ripped apart a star perhaps 150 times more massive than our sun in a relatively nearby galaxy in the most powerful and brightest supernova ever observed, astronomers said on Monday. And there is one such star in our own Milky Way galaxy that appears to be on the brink of dying in just such a supernova.

The exploding star's dramatic death may have come in a rare type of supernova reserved for "freakishly massive" stars that astronomers had speculated about but never previously witnessed.