Close to extinction?

Hello, and welcome again to my blog. Today, I’d like to talk about the article Going, Going, GONE? by Richard Pearson. This article is about how many species of animals are currently endangered, and how we could be close to another mass extinction (not unlike the one that wiped out the dinosaurs.)

Nearly 20,000 species of living creatures around the globe are at a high risk of extinction. If all of the species listed as threatened on the Red List, the list of living things at risk compiled by the International Union for Conservation of Nature, went extinct, then we could lose three quarters of all species within the short span of a few centuries. The last mass extinction like this potential one happened about 65 million years ago: the extinction of the dinosaurs. If this decline increases, much of the life on Earth could die off.

 

Researchers have been recording the number of living organisms in the world, and have said that if the present trends of decline continue, a mass extinction is very likely to happen, except this time the extinction could have been prevented. Instead of being caused by a quick climate change or a stray asteroid, it will be caused by a species abusing the planet. Humanity has been greatly modifying the landscape, and increasing the rate of the poisonous gases entering the air; we hurt the planet and its inhabitants knowingly, yet we do nothing to stop ourselves. The animals and plants that are dying hold together the ecosystems that help us survive, yet as they die they will cause a chain reaction that could have disastrous results.

In my opinion, we should be doing more to keep our planet healthy. This may seem stupid and not of great importance to most, but we need to be able to keep the place that we live healthy, or we could cause another mass extinction. And what will happen to us then?  Our species will probably come close to extinction as well, so we should try to keep our planet clean and alive while we can.

Image: http://philsanko.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/06/planet-earth-space.jpg