{"id":9754,"date":"2015-07-06T06:43:45","date_gmt":"2015-07-06T11:43:45","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=9754"},"modified":"2015-07-06T06:43:45","modified_gmt":"2015-07-06T11:43:45","slug":"the-sixth-extinction-adds-urgency-to-habitat-and-climate-protection","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=9754","title":{"rendered":"The \u201cSixth Extinction\u201d Adds Urgency to Habitat and Climate Protection"},"content":{"rendered":"<h3 class=\"title entry-title\"><a href=\"http:\/\/voices.nationalgeographic.com\/2015\/06\/24\/the-sixth-extinction-adds-urgency-to-habitat-and-climate-protection\/\" rel=\"bookmark\">The \u201cSixth Extinction\u201d Adds Urgency to Habitat and Climate Protection<\/a><\/h3>\n<p>It\u2019s now unequivocal: the sixth great spasm of species extinctions has begun.\u00a0\u00a0 We \u2013\u00a0<em>homo sapiens \u2013\u00a0<\/em>are its cause. And only we can slow it down.<\/p>\n<p>Over the last century, the average rate of loss of vertebrate species \u2014 fish, amphibians, reptiles, birds and mammals \u2013 has been up to 100 times higher than the background extinction rate, according to a\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/advances.sciencemag.org\/content\/1\/5\/e1400253\">new study<\/a>\u00a0published last week in the journal\u00a0<em>Science Advances<\/em>.<\/p>\n<p>In order to help settle the question of whether a sixth extinction episode has indeed begun, the scientific team chose assumptions that would tend to minimize evidence that it has.\u00a0 As a result, their calculations almost certainly underestimate the severity of the extinction crisis under way.<\/p>\n<p>\u201c[W]e can confidently conclude that modern extinction rates are exceptionally high, that they are increasing, and that they suggest a mass extinction under way \u2013 the sixth of its kind in Earth\u2019s 4.5 billion years of history,\u201d the researchers write.<\/p>\n<p>The study team included scientists from Princeton, Stanford, the University of California-Berkeley, the Universidad Nacional Aut\u00f3noma de M\u00e9xico, and the University of Florida.<\/p>\n<p>The last episode of mass extinction occurred about 65 million years ago, when the dinosaurs and about half of all species living on Earth at the time were wiped out.<\/p>\n<p>A huge crater off Mexico\u2019s Yucat\u00e1n Peninsula dated to the time of this event suggests an extraterrestrial impact as a leading cause.<\/p>\n<p>But, in a first, the current mass extinction is driven by human activities \u2013 deforestation, dam-building, over-harvesting, wetland-draining, pollution and the myriad other ways we destroy the lives and homes of the rich diversity of animals with which we share the planet.<\/p>\n<p>And this will not end in some Darwinian-style victory for we humans.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>&#8230;click on the above link to read the rest of the article&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The \u201cSixth Extinction\u201d Adds Urgency to Habitat and Climate Protection It\u2019s now unequivocal: the sixth great spasm of species extinctions has begun.\u00a0\u00a0 We \u2013\u00a0homo sapiens \u2013\u00a0are its cause. And only we can slow it down. Over the last century, the average rate of loss of vertebrate species \u2014 fish, amphibians, reptiles, birds and mammals \u2013 [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[1289,7021,1596,7018,7022,638,7019,7016,7017,7020,7023],"class_list":["post-9754","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-survival-2","tag-climate-protection","tag-dam-building","tag-deforestation","tag-national-geographic","tag-over-harvesting","tag-pollution","tag-sandra-postel","tag-sixth-extinction","tag-species-extinction","tag-species-loss","tag-wetland-draining"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9754","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=9754"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9754\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":9755,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9754\/revisions\/9755"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=9754"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=9754"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=9754"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}