More than 10 per cent of Australia’s native mammals have become extinct since European settlement. The extinction rate is higher than on any other continent.
There have been five major extinctions in the history of Earth. We are now entering the sixth.
Elizabeth Kolbert, author of The Sixth Extinction, compares the current unawareness of this looming calamity with the widespread public disbelief which preceded the beginnings of scientific inquiry ~ at which time it was believed: “Such is the economy of nature, that no instance can be produced of her having permitted any one race of her animals to become extinct; of her having formed any link in her great work so weak as to be broken.”
Kolbert ends with the observation that “… we are deciding, without quite meaning to, which evolutionary pathways will remain open, and which will forever be closed. No other creature has ever managed this….”
Weblinks~
The Sixth Extinction ~ Book Review | ISSP
Mass extinction: is the enemy us? | Great Transition Initiative
Study finds 10% of Australian mammal species extinct since European settlement | ABC News
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