Tumbling Head First Towards the 6th Mass Extinction
The reports in the news each day about the future of the world tend to be troubling: climate change is an ever-evolving and pressing issue. Habitat loss and drought are frequent topics, and yet there are still some who question the legitimacy of such news as evidence of larger problems. Now, a study from Science Advances asserts that things may be more dire than we have previously imagined.
The article, in which the authors stress that they have made “extremely conservative assumptions,” tries to deduce through precise calculations “whether human activities are causing a mass extinction.” It is surprisingly difficult to calculate: many studies of modern extinction are based on indirect estimates, though it should be noted that the literature shows broad agreement that extinctions have been underestimated in the past few centuries, “the period during which Homo sapiens truly became a major force on the biosphere.” What’s more, any kind of direct historical comparisons are complicated by the fact that estimating historical extinctions is even more difficult than estimating current ones.
Still, working from this cautious and conservative viewpoint, what the researchers find is worrisome. They say that current extinction rates “vastly exceed” what they call “natural average background rates,” even when those background rates are treated in the most conservative way possible. They state in no uncertain terms:
Therefore, although biologists cannot say precisely how many species there are, or exactly how many have gone extinct in any time interval, we can confidently conclude that modern extinction rates are exceptionally high, that they are increasing, and that they suggest a mass extinction under way—the sixth of its kind in Earth’s 4.5 billion years of history.
Is it fear mongering, or a sober analysis of data? Considering the careful way the researchers have parsed the numbers, it cannot be dismissed as scare tactics.
The question that many are probably asking is, what does this mean for us now? The researchers note that if this pace is allowed to continue, humans could be “deprived of many biodiversity benefits” in as little as “three human lifetimes.” Though this is framed around human benefits/losses, if we see animals and the environment as intrinsically valuable, these accelerated losses are clearly a massive blow to the planet. The researchers say that, if we wish to avoid a sixth mass extinction, it will “require rapid, greatly intensified efforts to conserve already threatened species and to alleviate pressures on their populations—notably habitat loss, overexploitation for economic gain, and climate change.” For animal advocates, this means that in addition to doing our part to help farmed animals, companion animals, and animals in captivity, we need to keep our eye on the greater environment and the wild animals who inhabit it. If we wish to keep our planet here and help out all of the animals living on it, protecting wild animals will continue to be a priority, as “the window of opportunity is rapidly closing.”