Environmental scientists are warning of a sixth mass extinction, pointing to a decline in vertebrate population sizes, even among species of least concern:
Many scientists say it's abundantly clear that Earth is entering its sixth mass-extinction event, meaning three-quarters of all species could disappear in the coming centuries. That's terrifying, especially since humans are contributing to this shift.
But that's not even the full picture of the "biological annihilation" people are inflicting on the natural world, according to a study published Monday [open, DOI: 10.1073/pnas.1704949114] [DX] in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. Gerardo Ceballos, an ecology professor at the Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México, and his co-authors, including well-known Stanford University biologist Paul Ehrlich, cite striking new evidence that populations of species we thought were common are suffering in unseen ways. "What is at stake is really the state of humanity," Ceballos told CNN.
The authors: Gerardo Ceballos, Paul R. Ehrlich, and Rodolfo Dirzo.
Also at The Guardian and DW.
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(Score: 2) by ilsa on Wednesday July 12 2017, @06:44PM
If you look at relatively recent reports about Chernobyl, you will find that wildlife has come back to the area with a vengeance.
The radiation is still an issue of course, but the fact that nature and wildlife is flourishing, demonstrates that just having humans living in an area is more devastating to the local ecology than an exploding nuclear reactor.