Notes
- The rate of extinction of animals in the past 100 years has increased 1,000 times since humans appeared
- Scientist think that it is more important to save evolution than endangered species
- Scientist thought that by the year 2000 a lot of species would be extinct
- between 1 and 10 percent of species will go extinct in a decade
- An estimate was that 27,000 species would go extinct in a decade
- About 4% of all species that ever existed are now in fossils
- the size of the problem depends on the how many species there are in total
- the rate in which mammals are being lost is 120 times higher than the usually is
- When species go extinct they make take some species with them like there predators
- out of the 1.8 million species that are claimed to exist, biologist don't know anything about most of them
- habitat loss also contributes the high amount of species that are endangered or are extinct
- logging has made 1/200 birds extinct in the U.S.
- the UN estimates that between 1990 and 2000 the world's forest dropped at an average of .2 percent each year
- some losses are just going to happen and cannot be stopped
Summary
This article mainly focuses on determining the problem of the extinction of many species around the world. Many scientist have different views on how species are getting extinct and what rate over the years. A prediction that was made in this article was that 1 million types of species will by extinct by the year 2000. Scientist are trying to figure out by when might a mass extinction occur. In order to find this, scientist must find the natural and current extinction rate and figure out if this rate is changing or if it is steady over the years. Different scientist have their ways of finding these rates. Scientist use habitat loss as a rate to find out how many species go extinct.
Opinion
I think that species are being lost to quickly. This article surprised me since I didn't know how fast and how often species were going extinct every decade. I feel like scientist really need to collaborate so that they can help figure out and help us prevent a mass extinction. This article shows the many different opinions of scientist but doesn't show them working together to find one correct answer. I think the sooner we can find the rate of extinction the better and more prepared we are to attempt to prevent a mass extinction