1 in 4 mammals at risk of extinction, scientists say

[DeepModem Mom]

Source: CNN/AP

WASHINGTON (AP) -- Conservationists have taken the first detailed look at the world's mammals in more than a decade, and the news isn't good.

"Our results paint a bleak picture of the global status of mammals worldwide," the team led by Jan Schipper of the International Union for the Conservation of Nature in Gland, Switzerland, concluded.

"We estimate that one in four species is threatened with extinction and that the population of one in two is declining," the researchers said in a report to be published Friday in the journal Science. The findings were being released Monday at the IUCN meeting in Barcelona, Spain.

"I think the bottom line is, what kind of a world do you want to leave for your children," Andrew Smith, a professor in the Arizona State University School of Life Sciences, said in a telephone interview. "How impoverished we would be if we lost 25 percent of the world's mammals," said Smith, one of more than 100 co-authors of the report.

"Within our lifetime hundreds of species could be lost as a result of our own actions, a frightening sign of what is happening to the ecosystems where they live," added Julia Marton-Lefevre, IUCN director general. "We must now set clear targets for the future to reverse this trend to ensure that our enduring legacy is not to wipe out many of our closest relatives."

The new report updates the IUCN's Red List of Threatened Species, which overall includes 44,838 species, of which 16,928 are threatened with extinction. Of these, 3,246 are in the highest category of threat, critically endangered, 4,770 are endangered and 8,912 are vulnerable to extinction. The IUCN estimated that 76 mammal species have gone extinct since 1500....

Read more: http://www.cnn.com/2008/TECH/science/10/06/endangered.mammals.ap/index.html

[MadrasT]

1. Are humans on the list? n/t

[AlphaCentauri]

8. Humans and cockroaches are on the over population list

[cobalt1999]

2. Bottom line: Too many Homo Sapians for the planet to support

Eventually, the entire ecosystem will collapse and our numbers will drop dramatically.

[AlphaCentauri]

9. sometimes I heard how the chinese are attacked for not letting their population have more babies

[cobalt1999]

13. At least they are trying.

Our population levels need to come down fast. Either we find a way to do it ourselves, or very large numbers of us starve off.

No way can the current human population levels be sustained. It's going to get ugly soon.

[AlphaCentauri]

19. the main problems resides in africa, asia and the middle east

but religions are part of the problem

[primavera]

27. Unfortunately, we won't starve until...

... we've decimated every other species on the planet first. What politician is going to stand up and demand environmental protection policies when human beings' lives are at risk of starvation? As long as there's a square centimeter of land that can still be brought under cultivation, we'll keep exploiting the earth to stuff our own faces at the expense of every other living creature on the planet. Don't you remember, God gave us dominion? Everything on the planet exists solely to serve and feed us.

[MountainLaurel]

29. Frighteningly, you speak the truth n/t

[Coventina]

3. Stories like this are profoundly depressing to me.

I always want to ask the fundies, "If you truly believe that God put you in charge of this planet, and he is returning any day, do you really think he's going to be pleased about what you've done to his creation?"

Conservation SHOULD BE a conservative value. It just goes to show that "conservatism" has lost its soul as a truly intellectual outlook.

[Lorien]

7. I agree 100%

and oddly, so does my fundie mom. She's a hardcore evangelical Christian who works for Campus Crusade for Christ, but even she says that God commands that we be "good stewards of the earth", and that by failing to do so we risk our own extinction. She said that she saw a photo recently of what was once rain forest in Brazil turned into mile upon mile of soybean crops. She said that it nearly made her sob because she knows that in ten years it there will be nothing there but barren dirt, and there will be no way of replacing what was MEANT to have been there.She believes in the whole "end times' scenario, but she also admits that our own greed and stupidity could wipe us out before there's a chance for that to happen. I wish that more fundies could wake up to reality.

[AlphaCentauri]

11. Fundamentalist are the excrement of God

They don't really understand God

[humus]

12. outrageous

"A change of heart or of values without a practice is only another
pointless luxury of a passively consumptive way of life."
-- Wendell Berry in "The Idea of a Local Economy"

To cherish what remains of the Earth and to foster its renewal is our only legitimate hope of survival.

- Wendell Berry

Berry: If you’ve lost the capacity to be outraged by what’s outrageous, you’re dead. Somebody ought to come and haul you off.

[nam78_two]

20. Agreed.nt

[hisownpetard]

4. K&R

[dipsydoodle]

5. Hopefuly the one in four will be

Palin.

[The Stranger]

6. OVERPOPULATION

Too many of our own species for the planet to support -- so the others must be obliterated.

What a wonderful species I can claim to be a member of.

[Lorien]

10. The thing mankind still doesn't understand is that we're all part of

one giant living organism. Our ecology supports us BECAUSE of it's diversity; every species has an important role to play. The reduction of bison and near extinction of wolves in the American West has dramatically altered the soil of their former habitat over 100 years. Now we need to depend on chemicals to keep it fertile-and eventually it becomes exhausted and turns into desert. Our own short sightedness and arrogance will be our undoing.

[The Stranger]

15. It impacts every single thing and, regrettably, it is irreversible.

I suppose one could say it is our fate.

[Jamastiene]

14. God, we are a stupid species.

Even parasites are smart enough not to kill their own host, but we're not.

[cobalt1999]

16. We think/behave as individuals not as a species though.

What's best for me in the short term is the driving influence, even when that destroys the chances for our species in the long term.

[The2ndWheel]

17. The host is a counterbalance

We do our best to eradicate any counterbalance. Like pumping $700 billion that we don't have into our unsustainable financial system.

[progressoid]

18. Yes and no.

Yes, we are a stupid species, but other species are also stupid.

Tests have been done with mice and fruit flies where they are put in a finite environment and allowed to eat and breed at will. The population grows exponentially and eventually exceeds what it's environment can sustain. Disease, starvation, death, cannibalism etc ensues. Nature wins.

[The Stranger]

25. But the point is that mice and fruit flies cannot reason out the end result of their actions.

We, unfortunately, can, yet still we destroy.

[progressoid]

26. Yeah.

Sometimes I wonder how much more evolved some of us are than them.

[nam78_two]

21. Depressing-recd.nt

[lonestarnot]

22. Gloom doom and woe is me.

:( :cry:

[damntexdem]

23. Speaking of bleak -- one of those species might turn out to be homo sapiens.

Of course, that's not so bleak for those that make it in the short run -- it would improve their chances for the long run.

[PfcHammer]

24. Bush should definitely be on this list

except he's a snake

[OakCliffDem]

28. kick