extinction (Page 7)

UPDATE – All over the earth, animal species are going extinct at an unprecedented rate. Orangutans were once known as the “old men of the jungle,” because they behave so much like humans. Now they may disappear as well. But the very LATEST victim is the Chinese tiger which, like so many others, is being exploited for use in traditional Chinese medicine.

In the Independent, Claire Soares writes that orangutans “may be wiped off the face of the earth within 10 years,” due to illegal rainforest logging in their habitats. She quotes UN official Christian Nellemann as saying, “The rate of decline of the forests is the most alarming we have seen yet anywhere in the world. Suitable forest habitat may be gone in as little as a decade.”
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We’ve reported that, due to ivory poaching, elephants may be facing extinction. Now it’s been discovered that rhinos are in major danger of extinction as well. Both species have body parts–ivory tusks in the case of elephants and a horn for the rhinoceros–that that are highly valued in traditional Chinese medicine.

Richard Black reports in BBC News that a rise in poaching has put some species of rhinoceros at risk of extinction. The amount of rhino horn being illegally traded increased 5 times between 2000 and 2005. Black quotes animal rights activist Simon Milledge as saying, "The main market remains in east and southeast Asia, as well as in the Middle East."
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Are we next? – Genetically modified plants, such as Starlink corn, arealmost all produced by Monsanto. They are usually engineeredto be resistant to Monsanto’s pesticide Roundup. This meansthat entire fields can be sprayed with Roundup and the weedswill die but the GM plants will survive. This sounds like agreat idea, except for one problem: It’s killing amphibiansworldwide.
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The fossil records tell us that there have been severalmassive extinction events in the life of the Earth. We nowknow the reasons for some of them?for instance, thedinosaurs were wiped out by an asteroid that broke intopieces upon impact, producing dust which blocked the lightof the sun. Recently, a consistent 62 million yearextinction cycle has been discovered. The last greatextinction took place 65 million years ago, and the cyclemay still be in place, because earth’s biodiversity hasbeen in decline for about 2.8million years, ever since the Central American land bridgeappeared and altered the flow of ocean currents around theequator. This would mean that a new extinction event beganjust about exactly 62 million years after the last one.
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