GONE

[Jcrowley]

Gone
By Julia Whitty
April 25, 2007



News: It is a fact widely accepted by biologists but little known by the population at large. By the end of the century, half of all species on Earth may be extinct. Who will survive the world's dwindling biodiversity, and why?

We awake in our tents in the moonlight to what sounds like a dance troupe in wooden clogs practicing on rock under stunted juniper trees. It's a half-dozen Carmen mountain white-tailed deer, scraping at the ground with bootlike hooves, bending gracile necks to chew on wet soil and lick it dry. They're harvesting the minerals and moisture from our urine soaked into the parched earth of the high desert, the herd toiling through the night and into the morning in a pursuit tenacious enough to enlighten us to the wastefulness of our own bodies. Clearly, the three of us have squandered most of what we drank hiking to 7,400 feet on the south rim of Texas' Chisos Mountains. From the deer's point of view, our arrival here is the next best thing to rain.

Come morning, we pack camp and loiter on the precipice, staring across wracked ranges and sunburnt country to the Rio Grande thousands of feet below, and to the even higher country of Mexico's Sierra Madre. Here, in Big Bend National Park, one of America's truly wild places, there's barely a sign of human impact, and not a sound of it—not planes, cars, or human voices. The silence is so thick that our ears feel congested, and we jump when the quiet is pierced by the whistle of a peregrine falcon on its glide path through thin air.

We spend a couple of hours here with binoculars, map, and compass, scanning 100-mile visibility, scrutinizing the area below the rim and trying to find a trail we might travel another day. Although we don't know it, we're peering down into the place where a lost hiker is desperately trying to find the same trail and a freshwater spring midway along it. At this point he has been without water for three days. We don't see him stumbling through cholla and nopales cactus and writing farewell notes to loved ones—though he is likely staring up at the mirage of us silhouetted against the sky.

http://www.motherjones.com/news/feature/2007/05/gone.html

[seemslikeadream]

1. It's Not Happening!

:hi:



http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QZKFoMq3GaA


the way your mind works
drivin' so fast, carving your way
through the city
well you can't tell me
you get what you want
you've figured it out
and yer just fine

cuz you're talking to yourself
you don't hear a thing
and all history unfolds before you
but you shut your eyes
but you shut your eyes
it's not happening
we all grew up and
we fend for ourselves
and we fend for each other
we fend for each other
sometimes

but you keep on racin' and runnin'
like something is chasing you
like something's gonna get you
well something's gonna get you someday

Be Good Tanyas

[seemslikeadream]

2. China's Rare River Dolphin Now Extinct

The delicate dolphin, which dates back 20 million years, was found only in China's longest river, the Yangtze.

[StarryNite]

6. If we keep buying

grain products from China we're all going to be extinct!

[loudsue]

8. China's going to kill all of us before too long.

They don't mind poisoning a few million people....they've got people to spare. That is one more example of BAD GOVERNMENT. All the resources in the world at their disposal, and they don't care about doing the right thing.

:kick:

[dysfunctional press]

7. with a snout like that- i'm guessing it was purported to have "aphrodisiac" qualities ...?

a certain death knell for any species.

[Bake]

3. By the end of this century

According to an article in the UK Independent (I'll try to find the link, I found it via Buzzflash), by the end of this century HALF -- that's right, HALF --of all current existing species of life on earth will be extinct.

HALF.

Bake

[seemslikeadream]

4. Miss Waldron's red colobus'

Recent hard evidence of the Miss Waldron's red colobus' existence has rekindled hopes of finding the primate, reportedly last seen in 1978.




If the monkey were indeed extinct, it would be the first primate to have disappeared in 200 years.

[LeftHander]

5. Sadly the rhino is gone because of boners

The Rhino was hunted to extinction because idiots believed that the horn ground into powder gave them strong erections.

[seemslikeadream]

9. The last Caspian Tiger reported shot was in 1957.

[Jcrowley]

10. Sylvia

told me, "I don't ever want to meet a tiger face to face but I also don't want to live in a world without them."

[file83]

11. Kick for Jcrowley (R.I.P.)

Certainly couldn't have been for this...

[earth mom]

12. I agree with your post! RIP Jcrowley-YOU ROCKED!

:yourock: