![]() (According to some studies, it's not even clear that biodiversity is suffering. The world is no better or worse for the absence of saber-toothed tigers and dodo birds and our Neanderthal cousins, who died off as Homo sapiens evolved. Extinctions of individual species, entire lineages and even complete ecosystems areĬommon occurrences in the history of life. In 50 million years, Europe will collide with Africa and form a new supercontinent, destroying species (think of birds, fish and anything vulnerable to invasive life forms from another landmass) by irrevocably altering their habitats. The inevitability of death is the only constant in life, and 99.9 percent of all species that have ever lived, as many as 50 billion, have already gone extinct. This is how evolution proceeds: through extinction. Conserving a species we have helped to kill off, but on which we are not directly dependent, serves to discharge our own guilt, but little else. But we are a part of the biosphere just like every other creature, and our actions are just as volitional, their consequences just as natural. This seems artificial because we, unlike other life forms, use sentience and agriculture and industry. Yes, we have altered the environment and, in doing so, hurt other species. The only reason we should conserve biodiversity is for ourselves, to create a stable future for human beings. ![]() There is no such thing as an “endangered species,” except for all species. ![]() Species constantly go extinct, and every species that is alive today will one day follow suit. Extinction is the engine of evolution, the mechanism by which natural selection prunes the poorly adapted and allows the hardiest to flourish. ," journalist Elizabeth Kolbert captures the panic all this has induced: "Such is the pain the loss of a single species causes that we're willing to perform ultrasounds on rhinos and handjobs on crows."īut the impulse to conserve for conservation’s sake has taken on an unthinking, unsupported, unnecessary urgency. biotic diversity has intrinsic value." In her book " The Sixth Extinction the untimely extinction of populations and species is bad. " What is Conservation Biology?," a foundational text for the field, written by Michael Soulé of the University of California at Santa Cruz, says, "Diversity of organisms is good. A joint paper by several prominent researchers published by the National Academy of Sciences called it a "biological annihilation." Pope Francis imbues the biodiversity crisis with a moral imperative ("Each creature has its own purpose," he said in 2015), and biologists often cite an ecological one (we must avert "a dramatic decay of biodiversity and the subsequent loss of ecosystem services," several wrote in a paper for Science Advances). Wilson, who coined the term "biodiversity" in 1985. It is an "immense and hidden" tragedy to see creatures pushed out of existence by humans, lamented the Harvard entomologist E.O. ![]() Mass extinctions periodically wipe out up to 95 percent of all species in one fell swoop these come every 50 million to 100 million years, and scientists agree that we are now in the middle of the sixth such extinction, this one caused primarily by humans and our effects on animal habitats. ![]()
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