Biodiversity May Reach A Critical Tipping Point.

[StormInateacup]

An international team of biologists released a report almost 8 years ago, warning that when endangered species become extinct, they take down other dependent species with them. The upshot of the finding is that up to 50 percent more species may be endangered than can be currently accounted for by biologists.

Since the publication of that report the situation has worsened and accelerated greatly.

In the current climate of shrinking research dollars due to the world economic slow down, population pressures leading to further incursions into sensitive wilderness areas and the destruction of native forest areas for such purposes as mining, propagation of bio-fuel and other cash crops, the rate of extinction far exceeds the scientific's community's ability to monitor precisely which species are being wiped out. ...and what the flow-on effects for biodiversity from that will be.

The best estimates are that 6,300 affiliate species are 'co-endangered' with host species currently listed as endangered. The report, published in the journal Science does not seem to have been followed ip to any great extent..

Furthermore, they added that current extinction estimates need to be recalibrated to take co-extinctions into account. I have not been able to access any information which makes it clear that this recommendation has been followed.

The researchers studied insects, mites, fungi and other organisms uniquely adapted to any of the more than 12,000 threatened or endangered species listed worldwide. What they found is that with the extinction of a bird, or a mammal or a plant, you aren't necessarily wiping out just one, single species, says study researcher Heather Proctor. We're also allowing all these unsung dependent species to be wiped out as well.

Proctor cites the example of a formerly endangered vine in Singapore. When the vine went extinct a few years ago, so did a rare and beautiful species of butterfly that had co-evolved with the plant.



While co-extinction may not be the most important cause of species extinctions, it is certainly an insidious and under researched one, the report concludes.

Source: www.planetark.com/dailynewsstory.cfm/new...3-Sep-2004/story.htm



The endangered California condor (Gymnogyps californianus) and its now extinct louse (Colpocephalum californici). This louse was only known from the California condor and went extinct as a result of efforts by conservation biologists to rid the bird of its parasites.





Hummingbird flower mites can go extinct if either the hummingbirds they use for transport or flowers on which the mites depend for nectar and pollen go extinct. In the illustration, the mite Tropicoseius uniformis, monophagous on its host plant Psychotria poepegiana, is phoretic on the hummingbird Amazilia tobaci in Trinidad, West Indies.

[Random Panther]

There is little doubt left in my mind that Earth is currently faced with a mounting loss of species that threatens to rival the five great mass extinctions of the geological past. As long ago as 1993,Harvard biologist E.O. Wilson estimated that Earth is currently losing something on the order of 30,000 species per year. I dread to think what that figure is today,and including co-threatened species.

I suspect that this biodiversity crisis,this “Sixth Extinction'' is even more severe,and more imminent,than Wilson had supposed.

I don't understand how we humans think that our species will survive a mass extinction.

[StormInateacup]

We're daily wiping out whole classes of microbial and microscopic life which we cannot even positively identify, let alone determined what their roles in the life cycle of the planet might be.

It's akin to allowing some clueless twat with a spanner to go into a high precision car engine and begin removing components and tossing them into a skip bin - then being surprised when you turn the key and it fails to start.

[Random Panther]

Paleontologist Dr. Niles Eldredge,the Curator-in-Chief of the permanent exhibition “Hall of Biodiversity” at the American Museum of Natural History and adjunct professor at the City University of New York has this to say:

Though it is true that life, so incredibly resilient, has always recovered (though after long lags) after major extinction spasms, it is only after whatever has caused the extinction event has dissipated. That cause, in the case of the Sixth Extinction, is ourselves — Homo sapiens. This means we can continue on the path to our own extinction, or, preferably, we modify our behavior toward the global ecosystem of which we are still very much a part. The latter must happen before the Sixth Extinction can be declared over, and life can once again rebound.

[StormInateacup]

Open Cut Mining Palabora South Africa:


Open Cut mining, Iron Ore, Western Australia (Hammersely Ranges)


Open Cut Mining, Coal, Hunter Valley NSW


Open Cut mining, Opals. Sth West Queensland


Deforestation, Queenstown,Tasmania.

(That hatdwood forest is pulped for paper btw)

Deforestation from mining, South Western Tasmania


The last cylacene, in a concrete pen in a zoo, 1935

TASMANIAN tigers had a bounty put on their heads and were hunted to death for allegedly being vicious sheep killers.
But new research suggests the extinct marsupials were wrongly accused and eradicated.
A Sydney study shows their bite was so weak they could not have tackled large, struggling sheep and would have mainly fed on small animals such as possums, wallabies and bandicoots.

Yellow Liquid, flowing into a river in the Great Lakes, USA. (industrial Effluent)


You travel around and you see this. You smell it. You listen for the sounds of birds and animals that you know must have once been there and there's nowt but the scream of 'dozers and the revving of engines . The stink of chemicals and dead, rotting fish, where once the aroma of wild flowers must have been all pervasive. ...and you think - can she come back from this level of injury? Has her assailant done for her this time?

Fucking opposable thumbs, eh? They can inflict wounds deeper than any iron like claw or crashing meteorite ever could

She's bleeding out....even as her gaping wounds fester.

[rscott]

N.Dak has gouged some horrendous holes in the earth strip mining coal but it is an environmental plus and world model.
Before mining begins all top soil is removed and stored. After the coal is removed the overburden is replaced and top soil returned to level farming or ranch land but 20% of every reclamation is set aside for conservation.
Conservation ground is given an entirely new profile with lakes, hills and valleys and planted to trees creating ecosystems that never existed before. I remember flat boring prairie as a kid that is now wooded hills, lakes and meadows.
Reclaimed conservation land is now some of the best hunting in the state.
When I lived out east, I saw what uncontrolled strip mining did in W.Vir with no conservation efforts and it still looks like a barren moonscape a century later.

We love the pristine beauty of our state and also have some of the strictest littering laws in the nation.
If you're caught you not only get a steep fine, you get to clean a mile of ditch. I fact the number one community service sentence is ditch cleaning.
Another reason is our ditches are used for hay and litter raises hell with the haying equipment and cows digestive systems.
In the old days we fed loose hay and the cattle could pick around pieces of litter but now all hay and embedded litter is finely chopped before being fed. This not only increases feed efficiency and preserves the lifespan of a cows teeth by three or four years, it also makes it impossible for the cows to avoid the litter.
Ingestion of of litter can cause hardware disease and bloating, both fatal.

Sorry - I got off on a bit of a stoned tangent - damned good dope.