Extinction in the UK
Natural England's Lost Life report has identified nearly 500 animals and plants which have become extinct in England, mostly within the last two centuries. In addition, nearly 1,000 native species have been labeled a conservation priority because of severe threats to their existence. Before humans dominated the planet, the normal loss was about one extinction every 20 years. Natural England's Cheif Scientist Tom Tew notes that the high rate of loss is set to continue unless ambitious conservation is taken.
Conservation experts have already predicted that the world is witnessing the "sixth great extinction of species, driven by the destruction of natural habitats, hunting, the spread of alien predators and disease, and climate change." Simon Stuart, chair of the Species Survival Commission for the International Union for the Conservation of Nature, says that for the first time since the dinosaurs disappeared, the loss of diversity of life is outpacing the rate at which new species can evolve.
Image: "British Wildlife Centre Red Squirrel" by Martin Pettitt on Flickr, courtesy of Creative Commons.
Tweet- 3-26-10
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Estimating and explaining extinction
Interesting to think about. The article you linked to has a paragraph with curious reasoning:
"The losses recorded compare with a natural rate of about one extinction every 20 years before humans dominated the planet, but are almost certainly an underestimate because of poor records of any but the "biggest, scariest" creatures before the 1800s."
If the current extinctions are underestimated because of poor records of the recent past, then how can we be so sure that "one extinction every 20 years before humans dominated the planet" is not also an underestimated number? Counting extinction rates in the distant past, based on fossil records alone, has to be tricky business.
Must we always treat human activity as somehow "outside" of the natural ebb and flow of species evolution? Might not our extinction-causing behavior be nature paving the way for yet greater creations?
What came after the great die off in the age of the dinosaurs? Mammals. Perhaps we are in another transition stage that will kill off scores of current species--maybe even humans--in order to set the stage for the next age of new creatures?
Before we get our panties in a bundle about rapid extinction, let's remember that human activity is nature, and that species/ecosystem evolution develops along timelines that vastly transcend our petty perspectives. Who knows what she might be planning?
Excellent
Bullsh*t
Er, these extinctions are a direct result of human irresponsibility. It has nothing to do with Gaia's grand plan, but everything to do with human greed and ignorance.
Are Palm Oil plantations in southeast Asia part of Gaia's grand plan? Are mines in South America part of Gaia's grand plan?
Seriously, your "this is all part of Gaia's plans" apathy is appalling. This isn't a case of wolves eating a deer, a natural cycle. It's blatant human activity (for material/selfish gain) destroying ecoystems.
RE: Bullsh*t
Wabi Sabi Wookie,
I expected my speculation to cause some hostile comments. You were quick to offer one.
I am not advocating environmental apathy and irresponsibility when I note that humans--and all of our activities--are the actions of Gaia herself.
I'm a bit tired of hearing about the wisdom and power of Gaia; about how psychedelic states show us how the mind of the Earth lives within our souls; about how everything is one, unbroken, interconnected whole--only to hear the same people cry that human activities and technologies are somehow outside of nature, that our species is not operating within the wisdom of Gaia, and that Gaia herself is helpless against "us."
Humans are Gaia, and their activities and technologies are the natural products of evolution, which groped and meandered for 15 billion years to create them. If Teilhard is correct, if evolution is "intelligently" working toward something--say, an Omega attractor, or "shift represented by 2012"--then human history, and the Industrial revolution, with all of its pillaging and pollution, is just another chapter in the unfolding of nature. It is, from the big picture, just as natural as grass and mushrooms.
I'm not saying that we should stop caring about human activities that harm the whole. I'm just concerned about the logical inconsistencies that seem to plague eco-spiritual cries.
Humans aren't Gaia
Hi Linkx.
I’m sorry, but humans aren’t Gaia, any more than humans are God. We are a symbiont of both God and of Gaia, and at present we are laboring in their combined womb. Our experience in their womb is both blissful and terrifying due to our current state in this process, and as with any live birth, the pain is all too real, but the chances for survival are still good.
Your wide-angle approach is one I recommend for those too distressed by the terror associated with this pregnancy, but it’s not the only necessary approach. To be intimately involved with and connected to our environment, and to the cause supporting its survival, is to be resonating deeply with our experience in the womb. (Environmentalists are intimately living the real pain of our combined womb experience) If, simultaneously however, we have the ability to view our challenge and our opportunity like an out-of-body experience; detached yet involved, then we can also objectively witness this singularly amazing event as it unfolds as if from a seat in the stadium.
Being able to hold both views, in my opinion, is one of the signs of an enlightened being; unless the advanced, and therefore more detached viewer such as yourself, still feels that their wide-angle view is superior... and if that person ridicules those yet to experience this kind objective detachment, then what is really gained?
Both views are essential for Love to win the day; all views are essential in order to both feel the intensity of this frightening pain, and to be detached from it; both views are essential in order for us to provide empathetic support to those still evolving; both views should be encouraged in order for us to survive through this pregnancy fully awake to its experience and fully aware of its consequences.
It's not either/or anymore. It's AND!
"those still evolving"
I must be one of "those still evolving" and may need your "empathetic support" until I can come to your enlightened viewpoint, which, as you said "is one of the signs of an enlightened being."
Until then I will continue to post comments from the darkness of my unenlightened, less evolved consciousness.
??? : )
To the various parties to this thread... As individuals, we each have a particular part to play in this, our wonderous story.
Care to judge another's path? Care to judge another's spirituality? Another's pace? One is welcome to do so! Notice the results.
Just try and not be a spiritual being. If you like, just go ahead and try. And now try and be an immaterial being. Anyone? Errrrr, well, just try not to be an intimate part of this, our earth, Gaia. Go on and try to be be seperate from the whole, from ALL, from God. While we're at it, try not to be your self. Try not to have a perspective, a point of view. Try not to feel. Try not to care. Try and divorce yourself from every motivating spur and passion that has ever moved you. Try not to have a heart.
We will all get to where ever it is that we are going, and we will all get there together, each with our own precious part to play, some motivated by intimate environmental concerns, and others motivated by broad spiritual concerns. And then, when we all get there, we'll keep on going, and going, and going...
Feel. Follow your Heart. Listen. Share. Act. Be. We are called on to do nothing more than this. Indeed, it is impossible do less than this, and impossible do more than this! We are - individually and collectively - perfectly safe, perfectly loved, and perfectly well positioned. always. I smile at the prospects!
And thanks for the post Marisa!
You misread my comment, Linkx
The Civil Wilderness
Civilization is usually advertised as the "congenial" way of behavior.
Yet virtually every natural Eco-system has built in civil codes ... always perpetrating balance ... where as civilized man has always and only come about at the very expense of such "indigenous law" ...
Really ... to the degree the so-called advancement of civilization ... is cent-per-cent to the degree of the loss of natural intuition ... the very art of being wild compromised to the "enth" degree.
The more far out we have gone ... the more infatuated we are with indigenous culture ... the more conventional our habitual outlook ... the more intrigue in the esoteric states of consciousness.
When we talk about sustainable culture we tend to do so separate from conscious intuition lost to such inherent reality ... as if merely a "lifestyle choice" rather than our natural state of survival.
The Civilized beast ... and the Wilderness Gentleman ... who is really who.
One-and-a-half planets
I was listening to a recent NPR radio broadcast; an interview with the author of a new book about the environment. She said that humans are currently digesting Earth's resources at the rate of one-and-a-half planets per year. This rate of depletion is only possible because of the planet's storage of resources over many millennia, but it is clearly unsustainable, and close to a tipping point.
This rate of depletion does not sound "natural" to me, nor does it seem within the logical scope of any "plan" Gaia might have for the diversity of her children.
To suggest that humanity's pillaging of the Earth's resources is natural, is to justify and therefore continue our exploitive domination of it.
While I have no doubt that Gaia will somehow survive humans given sufficient geologic and evolutionary time, I cannot condone her exploitation.
"Your planet? This is not your planet" -The Day The Earth Stood Still
!!!!!!
I am a simple-minded man