On friday, the us government issued a staement, after 5 years of trying to confirm sightings, the carribian monk seal has officially been declared an extinct species. As a direct result of human intereferance. another sad day .
Another extinction, another R.I.P. or warning from Planet Earth to H. sapiens Another day, another species goes extinct. The latest IUCN/WWF data are a staggering reminder of the biodiversity loss that Homo sapiens' actions are leaving us with. People should realise it is to our own detriment that species go extinct and biodiversity is lost FOREVER! With 6 billion Homo sapiens on the planet, we are simply too many to sustain our ecosystems, climate and habitats. Animal and plant species extinctions is just one issue in the total frame. Ecologically induced catastrophies (hurricanes US+China, Phillipines etcetera), tsunamis (loss of mangrove forests), landslides (in cut tropical rainforest areas in Indonesia, Amazon), the bush meat crisis (Africa in Congo basin and SE Asia for the China hunger for exotic wildlife foods), world hunger (too many people using marginal rangelands and depleting water supplies and plant cover). When will we learn that ONLY way to reverse climate change, biodiversity loss and habitat encroachment lies in better education for all (including in all developing nations where the needs are greatest), investment in family planning (instead of health) of all humankind and real action with billions in annual relief for biodiversity and habitat conservation, will only SAVE OUR PLANET! People wake up, get busy and do something! If it is not for the love of oneanother, do it to stave off your own extinction! And do we really want our great grand children to inherit a planet WITHOUT ANIMAL AND PLANT LIFE!
What's the big fuss about? As unfortunate as it is, this is certainly no surprising news; ignoring some rather cryptozoological reports, the species hasn't been observed since the early 1950s. NOAA just officially confirmed this status-that's it. So as sad as it is, this shouldn't have surprised anyone-and only support the conservation of the remaining monk seal species.
Yep, we humans are in plague proportion on this planet.( If it was any other species we would be shooting them to keep the numbers down!) This has been discussed before. When I suggested that if we humans don't do something about it ourselves, nature will sort us out, a few other people on this forum tut-tutted in horror. Our zoos are supposed to be preserving animal species so that we can return them to the wild "one day". Will that day ever come?
You have some good points Ara, and I agree with all of them. The day when self-sustaining herds of captive animals are released into the wild will never actually arrive, as the only captive wildlife that is released is the odd handful that rarely ever flourish. Even if some species adapt well to their native environment, it is sadly never enough to maintain the entire world population.
