"The Sixth Extinction" published in 1995 (click here)
The Sixth Extinction
Niles Eldredge
An ActionBioscience.org original article
June 2001There is little doubt left (click here) in the minds of professional biologists that Earth is currently faced with a mounting loss of species that threatens to rival the five great mass extinctions of the geological past. As long ago as 1993, Harvard biologist E.O. Wilson estimated that Earth is currently losing something on the order of 30,000 species per year — which breaks down to the even more daunting statistic of some three species per hour. Some biologists have begun to feel that this biodiversity crisis — this “Sixth Extinction” — is even more severe, and more imminent, than Wilson had supposed....
Can we stop the devastation of our planet and save our own species? We are in a biodiversity crisis — the fastest mass extinction in Earth’s history, largely due to:
- human destruction of ecosystems
- overexploitation of species and natural resources
- human overpopulation
- the spread of agriculture
- pollution
