Reply #104: just adding to your excellent fact-based post

[FizzFuzz]

From IUCN the World Conservation Union

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The world's species face an unprecedented crisis. The rate at which they are being lost is alarming, even when compared with the extinction episode of 70 million years ago when the dinosaurs disappeared. No-one knows exactly what the current extinction rate is, but recent calculations by leading scientists put it at between 1,000 and 10,000 times greater than it would naturally be. The rate of extinction also appears to be increasing. Species are threatened in every habitat on every continent, though the severity of threat varies from place to place. Evidence suggests that freshwater habitats, particularly rivers, and oceanic islands are very severely affected by species extinction. Tropical Asia and Australia appear to suffer particularly high extinction rates.

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There are many causes of the current extinction crisis, but all of them stem from unsustainable management of the planet by humans.....
.....Most {threats to species} relate to large-scale modifications of the Earth's surface by humans, and the loss of species is largely an unintended by-product of the way people have chosen to live. Behind the threats are powerful driving forces that push species to extinction at an increasing rate. For instance, the increasing economic wealth of much of the world is making demands on the natural environment that cannot be met, leading to habitat destruction, over-harvesting of animals and plants, pollution, and climate change. At the opposite end of the spectrum, in the poorer regions of the world, poverty is forcing people to adopt modes of subsistence living involving activities such as burning and over-grazing that are destroying critical habitats for species. The trend to increasing economic globalisation and the relaxation of trade controls lies behind the uncontrolled spread of invasive species.

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not meaning to nitpick, just adding an issue that is particularly painful to me.