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Ten Percent of World's Major Species 'at Threat'
SYDNEY - The "Number of Living Species in Australia and the World" study found 0.9 percent of the world's 1.9 million classified species were at threat, including 9.2 percent of major vertebrate species.
An Arctic Fox near Kangerlussuaq, Greenland. Polar bear cubs, the Arctic fox and caribou herds are among the victims of dramatic changes in the Arctic due to climate change. Almost 10 percent of the world's mammals, birds, reptiles, amphibians and fish are in danger of extinction due to climate change and other factors, according to an Australian report released Tuesday.
(AFP/AAAS/File/Eric Post) Australia's government-funded Biological Resources Study, the world's only census of animal and plant life, found 20.8 percent of mammals were endangered, as were 12.2 percent of birds and 29.2 percent of amphibians.
Of reptiles, 4.8 percent were considered threatened, along with 4.1 percent of fish species.
"In Australia and around the world, biodiversity is under huge and growing pressure," said environment department secretary Robyn Kruk.
"The pressures are pervasive and chronic in many places; invasive species, habitat loss and climate change in particular."
Australia was found to be home to 7.8 percent of the world's known species. Environment Minister Peter Garrett said the study had shown its wildlife was highly unique, with 87 percent of mammals and 93 percent of reptiles found nowhere else in the world.
However, the study also showed Australian species accounted for 9.1 percent of the world's threatened flora and fauna, and Garrett said vigilance was essential.
"We have a long way to go, we have discovered and named only about a quarter of Australia's estimated number of flora and fauna," said Garrett.
"We need this essential information to do a better job of managing our biodiversity against the threats of invasive species, habitat-loss and climate change."
According to the report there were likely to be some 11 million species on Earth of which only 1.9 million had been discovered, with millions of invertebrates, fungi and other organisms yet to be found and named.
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6 Comments so far
Show Allmostly caused by homo sapiens and their lust for stupid things.............
The poverty of the percentage perspective begins to be thrown into stark relief.
Each creature has evolved in an entire web of balances and interactive dynamics that permeate life at every level from the molecular, bacterial, viral, microbial, floral-faunal and we talk about individual critters amazed at our capacity to prognostic regarding their presence in a generalized environment.
I pray that all of us start to have dreams about the infinite interactivity of the creation. Its time for us to be stopped full in our tracks.
Its interesting - a non-living thing - the economy can be seen as so interactive as requiring absolute worship, but life - nature - is set apart, something to be used rather than loved and cared for.
The phrase "at threat" seems odd. Since this is an Australian report I assume that's how must be phrased in Australia. In the U.S. we would use "are threatened" or more likely, "at risk."
In any case the meaning is clear. We are all flying through the universe on the spaceship Earth with no other means of surviving and we have hammered and destroyed it with such abandon that higher level mammals like ourselves are dying off; just like the canaries in the coal mine. We see it happening but the structures and systems in place can't be stopped. All we seem to be able to do is look at it and recognize whats happening rather like a man walking towards the hangman's noose. There is little doubt how it ends.
Sloppy headline writing bothers me. It's not "Ten Percent of World's Major Species", it's 9.2% of the world's major VERTEBRATE species.
9.2% of the vertebrates is bad enough, but the vertebrates are a minority. It would be worse if that percentage of the invertebrate species -- such as those which pollinate crops, turn the soil, dispose of feces and corpses, or feed vertebrates -- were threatened. A possible decimation of PLANT species would raise even worse prospects.
We're ALL "threatened" whatever numbers are printed.
SHOAH
The biblical word Shoah (שואה) (also spelled Sho'ah and Shoa), meaning "calamity
," became the standard Hebrew term for the Holocaust as early as the 1940s. ...
It also means Southern Hemisphere Oceanic Annexation (for Humanity) - SHOA(H)
Effectively what we have in the world today is that 5.8 Bn live above the Tropic of Capricorn and only 200M, less than 5%, live below it. What causes the SHOAH is that the North is "eating" the South. It is a Holocaust of species.
With a self righteousness based only on strength, the North comes, unimpeded, into the Southern Hemisphere and simply rapes our resources. Can you imagine if we went up there and put a drag line, 2 Km wide and 50Km deep across Canada or Russia and simply ripped out everything, taking what we wanted and tossing 80%, the "waste" back as dead garbage. Allowing this SHOAH to continue only exacerbates the problem. If there are 5.8 Billion now and we continue to allow them to eat us, there will be 6.8 Billion soon, this imbalance creates a self fulling destruction.
The time for debate is over. There can be no more discussion. We need an Alliance between Chile, Argentina, SA, Australia and NZ and possibly one Northern Hemisphere non fishing partner like France to supplement the weaponry. Then with the support of a diaspora in the Northern Hempishere that will understand our cause - we move. We put a blanket ban on fishing below 23 degrees South and any human traffic below the 50 degrees. Northern scientists are expelled or coopted into Southern controlled projects. Military patrols are setup overnight and extreme force is used against anyone breaking these rules. We have to lead by example and close our own fishing industries. Fishermen are turned into Ocean Police. A few exclusion zones to allow controlled fish farming, but thats it.
My full story at www.philipcopeman.com