Few people in the world are aware their wellbeing may one day depend on a blue-blooded crab that looks like a cross between the facehugger from Alien and a gigantic louse. Fewer still realise this ancient creature now faces its greatest threat in more than 450m years. The American horseshoe crab outlived the dinosaurs and […]
Tag: mass extinction
It Could Take 5 Million Years for Mammals to Recover From Our Impact
Evolve or die, as the saying goes, but for mammals it isn’t going to be quite that simple. At least not according to a new study that concluded we’re wiping out so many of them so quickly that it will take millions of years for them to recover. Over millions of years natural disasters have […]
Humanity is ‘cutting down the tree of life’, warn scientists
Humanity’s ongoing annihilation of wildlife is cutting down the tree of life, including the branch we are sitting on, according to a stark new analysis. More than 300 different mammal species have been eradicated by human activities. The new research calculates the total unique evolutionary history that has been lost as a result at a […]
Become a “Wildlife Champion” and actively defend the “Biodiversity of Planet Earth”
Earth is most likely experiencing its sixth mass extinction. The planet has been through at least five such catastrophes before, but this is the first one in human history — and the first one with human fingerprints. 58 percent of Earth’s vertebrate animals have been lost since 1970. Habitat loss and wildlife crime are the […]
POLL: Do We Need an International Agreement to Halt Mass Extinction?
We are in the midst of the sixth major extinction event in the history of the planet — one that is entirely human-caused. And this alarming and ever increasing rate of extinction shows no sign of halting. Based on estimates of total global biodiversity and annual rate of species loss, well over 10,000 species could […]
POLL: Should there be a global treaty on biodiversity based on the Paris climate deal?
How is that fun?” asked US talkshow host Jimmy Kimmel in a segment about trophy hunting aired after Cecil, a well-known lion tagged by researchers, was killed in Zimbabwe by Minnesota dentist Walter Palmer in 2015. Kimmel choked up as he asked viewers to donate to Oxford University’s conservation research programme, and his shame and […]
Everyday Extinction: An Instagram Campaign Raising Awareness of Species Extinction
The current rate of biodiversity loss has thrust the world into a sixth extinction event and much of the blame falls on humanity, as does the responsibility for combating the severe losses. Raising public awareness on the rapid extinction of species is one of the most important actions we can take. In response to this […]
For Species At Risk of Extinction, Size Matters
Scientists have been warning about a sixth mass extinction, and when it comes to species at risk of disappearing, size is going to matter a lot, according to a new study. For the study, which was just published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, an international team of scientists from the U.S., […]
