Mass Extinctions – the horrid truths.

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Mass Extinctions – the horrid truths.

 

Before the first fields were ever planted humans had totally wiped out all the Earth’s megafauna.

 

The Mastodon, Giant Elk, Giant Sloth, Mammoths, Giant Beaver, Giant Sea-Cow and many others were all hunted to extinction. The first signs that humans had migrated into an area was the total disappearance of all the megafauna.

 

These creatures, being large, were easy to find and hunt and provided much meat. They were also slow to breed so they did not replace their numbers. It did not take long to wipe them out to complete extinction.

 

Homo sapiens wiped out all other species of humans and then set about wiping out the rest of life on the planet.

 

It is estimated that human beings are responsible for the extinction of:

90% of the large animals of Australia

75% of the large animals of America

50% of all the large animals on the planet.

 

We look at the early cave paintings and can only wonder at the creatures we see depicted in them. We killed them all.

 

But it doesn’t stop there. We are hunting the remaining large animals – the gorillas, whales, porpoises, dolphins, hippos, rhinos, elephants, chimps, orangutans and tigers. Soon they will be gone too.

 

We don’t seem to learn our lessons.

 

Our children will inherit a world devoid of the plethora of wild-life. All they will have are the seagulls, pigeons, crows, rats, foxes and cockroach – the creatures that have adapted to life off our rubbish dumps and dustbins, to hide in our sewers and slide into chinks in the wall.

 

Before we even became farmers, while our numbers were few, we had destroyed some wondrous creatures.

 

The speed we are killing our creatures is increasing. When will we wake up?

Vertebrate Wildlife Species Have Declined By Half Over Last 40 Years

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I find this incredibly distressing.

Vertebrate Wildlife Species Have Declined By Half Over Last 40 Years

Plants and Animals

Vertebrate Wildlife Species Have Declined By Half Over Last 40 Years
Wayne Dilger CC BY ND 2.0

The 2014 Living Planet Report from the World Wildlife Fund has described the loss of wildlife as much worse than predicted two years ago. In 2012, they predicted that wildlife had declined by about 30 percent between 1970 and 2010, though new numbers suggest that wildlife populations have actually been cut by about 52 percent. The difference in reported loss is due to a new method for collecting the numbers.
The recent report analyzed 10,000 representative populations of fish, amphibians, reptiles, birds, and mammals, discovering how they’ve been faring over the last 40 years. Sadly, they do not appear to be doing very well. The report attributes human activity, including poaching, over-hunting, and habitat destruction as the largest burden upon wildlife.
Humans, like all animals, utilize food and water from the environment in order to survive. The problem is in how these resources are acquired, as they are being exhausted much faster than they can bounce back. Deforestation is occurring more quickly than trees can return to full growth. Not only does this contribute to a warming climate by reducing the planet’s capability to fix atmospheric carbon, but it also destroys the habitats of many species.
The decline is not affecting all species equally. According to the report, tropical regions have been hit the hardest. Species that live in freshwater have been reduced by an astonishing 76 percent, while about 94 percent of the historic range of elephants has been eliminated. Tigers that were once 100,000 strong at the turn of the 20th century, have been reduced to only 3,000 worldwide; most of which are in captivity. Species have been declining even within protected areas due to poaching and illegal deforestation.
The report claims that humans would need 1.5 Earths in order to keep up with the amount of resources being utilized. Though astronomers have been making some great progress with studying exoplanets, they haven’t found any replacements for us. Even if they had, there would be no way to access those resources. There is no backup plan for wasting resources in the manner we are. We humans need to change our rate of consumption, as our current actions are simply not sustainable.
In addition to over-hunting and habitat destruction, climate change is particularly threatening. Changing temperatures alter migration times, routes, and destinations. When animals have to migrate to a new location, they have to compete with existing species for resources. Ocean acidification and increasing temperatures threaten fish populations that can only tolerate a specific spectrum of temperatures and water chemistry.
Though the numbers and outlook within the report are fairly dismal, it does not have to be that way. There is still enough time to change consumption habits and develop a more concerted effort in protecting existing wildlife. Not only would this preserve a desirable level of biodiversity on Earth, but it would also guarantee that the natural resources on which humanity depends will be there in the future.

Hope for the future. It’s a long time off.

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The Earth, or rather life on Earth, has survived many cataclysmic events and each time (so far) has clawed its way back. The peaks of evolutionary complexity were crushed and over time new forms evolved to take their place – not better but different. We are the present calamity as we destroy the life around us and bring in the biggest wave of extinctions since the last asteroid hit. Already in my lifetime the changes have been dramatic. In my own backyard hedgehogs are a rarity, honey bees absent, few butterflies frolic on the flowers, slowworms, lizards and grass snakes are almost never seen and the streams are devoid of darting sticklebacks. The joys of my youth have vanished.

It saddens me. But I know things will recover.

When we are gone life will return, though it will, I fear, be far too late for so many. Many of our most extraordinary will be gone forever.

Over long periods of time, millennia, new forms of complex life will evolve. Maybe we will even see intelligence evolve again? Maybe not? Whatever evolves will not be predictable and neither will it inevitably be an improvement on what we have now. But the planet will recover. I do not think we are yet capable of destroying all life – just the more complex forms.

I look ahead to those distant times with a modicum of hope. Perhaps in a few million years time the planet will have recovered from our outrages and be vibrant with complex life again? I hope so. And I hope those new forms will prove as wonderful as the variety we now have all around us. But there are no guarantees when dealing with the chance and luck of evolution.

That hope for the future does not prevent me from mourning the demise of the creatures that once teemed over our green jewel of a planet. I mourn for the tiger, elephant, rhino and gorilla, the frog, newt and bee, the butterfly, stickleback and chimpanzee and the hundreds of thousands of other species that we are presently mindlessly destroying.

I mourn. Even my hope for the future fails to raise my spirits. We had so much and we are carelessly throwing it away, discarding living creatures like trash.

 

A wonderful stag on the Isle of Mull.

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I took these photos a week or so ago. We were in the back of our cabin and this wonderful stag was grazing in a clearing. He was magnificent.

Of course, we shot him. I’ve got his head in my study and he made the most delicious stew.

Rachel Carson Quotes – We’re heading for that Silent Spring unless we wake up!

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Back in the sixties Rachel Carson sent out a strong warning to us all with her book Silent Spring, where she foresaw the death of nature through the indiscriminate use of pesticides. She described not waking to that dawn chorus of birds.
Well it is happening.
It is not so dramatic as described but is a relentless slow destruction of nature, loss of habitat, deforestation, pesticide death, animal slaughter and loss of our natural world.
Our population is out of control. We are presently destroying the planet and sending thousands of species crashing to extinction.
Time we woke up, reduced our numbers and protect what is left.
The world is a beautiful place. My nightmare is of a concrete desert and manicured lawns and flowerbeds.
Here are a few of Rachels eloquent words.:
Those who dwell among the beauties and mysteries of the earth are never alone or weary of life.
Too true. It is a spectacular place to spend a life.
The more clearly we can focus our attention on the wonders and realities of the universe about us, the less taste we shall have for destruction.
I wish more people loved nature.
It is a wholesome and necessary thing for us to turn again to the earth and in the contemplation of her beauties to know the sense of wonder and humility.
It is a focus of rejuvenation and happiness.
Only within the moment of time represented by the present century has one species — man — acquired significant power to alter the nature of the world.
And we are busy destroying it for profit.
In every outthrust headland, in every curving beach, in every grain of sand there is the story of the earth.
We are part of it.
As crude a weapon as the cave man’s club, the chemical barrage has been hurled against the fabric of life.
We are poisoning the world and all life on the planet.
For the sense of smell, almost more than any other, has the power to recall memories and it is a pity that you use it so little.
All we will smell is smoke and rotting corpses.

Dian Fossey – A Zoologist who championed gorillas.

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I often feel that I prefer most animals to human beings. They are not so cruel and stupid.

Dian was an American Zoologist who worked with gorillas in the Congo and Rwanda. She fought poaching and tourism and ended up being murdered. Her famous book (and film) ‘Gorillas in the Mist’ was the story of her work. Without people like Dian there wouldn’t be any animals left. We are too stupid to realise that we are part of this huge web of life. If we remove it we cut off our own legs.

Gorillas have 99% the same genes as a human being. They are social, intelligent and wonderful creatures. Yet we are slaughtering them for meat! The sooner we make killing gorillas, chimps and other primates the crime of murder the better. It distresses me.

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“When you realize the value of all life, you dwell less on what is past and concentrate more on the preservation of the future.” …

We need to. It is being destroyed by the minute. We must be desperate to preserve it.

“The man who kills the animals today is the man who kills the people who get in his way tomorrow”

It’s the same violence, hatred and evil.

“The more you learn about the dignity of the gorilla, the more you want to avoid people.”  

I prefer animals too. People are nasty.

Gorillas are almost altruistic in nature. There’s very little if any ‘me-itis.’ When I get back to civilization, I’m always appalled by ‘me, me, me.’

It is the blind greed and selfishness that is destroying the planet.

I feel more comfortable with gorillas than people. I can anticipate what a gorilla’s going to do, and they’re purely motivated.

People are devious. They lie and deceive. They flatter in order to knife you. You can’t trust them. I know where I am with most animals.

 

Animal Rights – Plant Rights – Human Rights

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Around 3 billion years ago a wondrous thing happened. The Earth had been cooling for a couple of billion years and conditions conspired to create something incredible. The first simple life-form was produced.

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The chances of that happening are so slight that it is possible that out of all the planets circling the 400 billion stars in our own galaxy this is the only instance where life has spontaneously formed. It could be that we are the only life in any of the two trillion galaxies that we know of.

Life is something special.

From that one single cell of life the whole spectrum of life on this planet has evolved – from the simplest to the most complex.

What we have all around us comes from that first cell. We are all its children.

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No plant or animal is more evolved than any other. We have all been around for exactly the same time.

Only humans would apply a value system to life. We try to create a hierarchy of importance.

We place plants at the bottom of the scale, then bacteria, then we work our way up through worms, slugs, insects to fish, then through amphibian, reptiles and birds to mammals – through mammals to monkeys then apes and finally us – human beings – the crown of creation. Some people don’t even accept that we are animals and related to everything else. Somehow we were uniquely created by a deity. We are not part of this at all.

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Except this is nonsense. Nothing is more important than anything else. We humans are just animals. We have merely organised living things according to their similarity to ourselves. In a biological sense plants are the highest form of life. Their cellular complexities is hundreds of times more complex than that of any human cell. We place a premium on intelligence. Consciousness and intelligence are merely survival characteristics evolved by organisms – nothing more.

I don’t mean to belittle the wonder of consciousness and intelligence – they are phenomenal. I merely point out that they are one of many equally fabulous wonders that life possesses. They are no more special.

Likewise we cannot know the level of consciousness of other creatures or even plants. We can only surmise.

Personally I believe we will soon discover that plants have a consciousness that is quite as good as ours. We will see.

The argument that I am making is that life is too fabulous to treat with the disdain that we have been treating it. We should be worshipping all of it for the wonder it is and protecting it with all our might.

I am a big advocate of human rights – but I am a bigger advocate of the rights of the rest of the spectrum of life. I think it is foolish to make distinction.

The message I would send is – protect nature, protect the plants and animals around us, conserve the wilderness and diversity. They all have as much importance and rights as we do.

This is what I have to say about the destruction we are doing to nature and a way forward.

Poetry – Gorilla – an elegy to the inevitable demise of a relative of ours.

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We do need to save these wonderful and intelligent people.

Poetry – I am a gorilla – A poem to humanity who has none.

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I’m still a bald gorilla!

The differences between plants and animals is a result of what they eat!

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If you start off by imagining a plant and an animal as a blob we can go from there!

Plants make their own food from light, water, carbon dioxide and mineral salts.

Animals have to eat complex food from plants and animals.

The Animal

It has to find its food so it needs senses.

It has to move to get to its food so it needs limbs.

It has to eat and break down the food so it needs a digestive system.

It needs a nervous system to coordinate the senses and control the limbs.

Because it is moving it uses lots of energy and requires lungs and a heart and blood system.

Because there are waste molecules in the food it takes in it has to excrete them.

Hence the animal is complex and has lots of crucial systems that make it vulnerable.

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The Plant

It doesn’t have to move because all its necessary materials are all around it.

It develops flat projects to increase it’s surface area to absorb light and carbon dioxide (Leaves)

It develops projects to go down into the soil to absorb water and mineral salts (Roots)

It develops tubes to carry the water and food around its body

It sits there and feeds.

Reproduction is a problem because it can’t move so they get insects and the wind to do all the hard work for them.

A plant’s cells are 200 times more complex than an animals but it’s body is much simpler. Therefore it is not prone to damage. It is less vulnerable. It does not have lots of essential, delicate systems.

It is conscious.

The difference between a plant and animal is due to the way they eat. Plants are the highest forms of animals. They are much more complex than us.