Biodiversity Loss

There are many issues facing the world at present, the most hard to refute, dangerous for our planet and disturbing in its long term consequences is probably the daily mass extinction of species commonly referred to as the “Holocene”. In the 439 Million year history of planet earth, “five great extinction events have reshaped earth in cataclysmic ways [...] each one wiping out between 50 and 95 percent of the life of the day, including the dominant life forms”. Today, biologists say, we are living in the sixth; the “Holocene.” The World Conservation Union established and maintains a list (The Red List); a database of all known species. Of the 40,168 species that the 10,000 scientist in the World Conservation Union have assessed:
1. “One in four mammals, one in eight birds, one in three amphibians, one in three conifers and other gymnosperms are at risk of extinction. 40 per cent of the examined species of planet earth are in danger, including perhaps 51 per cent of reptiles, 52 percent of insects, and 73 per cent of flowering plants”
2. The Current rate of extinction is 100 times that of the background rate whilst the eminent biologist Edward O Wilson, among others, argues that it is in fact 1,000 to 10,000 that of the background rate.
3. “Wilson predicts that our present course will lead to the extinction of half of all plant and animal species by 2100,” not to mention that the biodiversity already lost will take 10 million years to re-establish itself in a different form. The holocaust and the two world wars will not be remembered as what is currently happening to the earth by future generations.
And although the relationship between human activity and the Holocene extinction event is well documented it is clear that the phenomena described above, if left unchecked, will also negatively impact Ontario’s biodiversity, whilst the locality’s ecosystems would flourish, as they have done for millennia, without industrial influence. Indeed, there are a number of species, such as the woodland caribou and eastern wolf, threatened by activities such as loss of habitat due to logging. This is well documented. There are 400 species in total listed in Canada’s “National Species at Risk Act.” A 2001 article in the journal Science listed the “Evil Quartet” of extinction causes: habitat destruction, overexploitation, introduced species, and secondary extinctions – all of which have human origins.


Julia Whitty. “Animal Extinction: The Greatest Threat to Human Kind” in The Independent (The Independent, 2007) http://www.independent.co.uk/environment/animal-extinction--the-greatest-threat-to-mankind-397939.html (accessed March 20, 2009)

Julia Whitty. “Animal Extinction: The Greatest Threat to Human Kind” in The Independent (The Independent, 2007) http://www.independent.co.uk/environment/animal-extinction--the-greatest-threat-to-mankind-397939.html (accessed March 20, 2009)

John L Gittleman and Mathew E Gomper, “What You Don’t Know Will Hurt You,” Science Vol. 291. no. 5506, (2001) 997 – 999 http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/full/sci;291/5506/997?maxtoshow=&HITS=10&hits=10&RESULTFORMAT=&fulltext=causes+of+extinction&searchid=1&FIRSTINDEX=0&resourcetype=HWCIT (accessed March 20, 2009)