Needlenose

It looks like Silent Spring redoux – 1/3 of US bird species are rapidly heading  towards oblivion.  Sorry to have to post yet another bummer update to my earlier war on other species post.

It’s really depressing to consider that we are causing, and concurrently watching, the greatest species extinction since the end of the dinosaurs. Ever since I was a kid, watching Jacques Cousteau or Mutual of Omaha’s Wild Kingdom, I’ve been watching wilderness disappear – and with it, all the species I was so fascinated with as a child. I guess the planet is slowly boiling to death, so like the proverbial frog in the pot, we don’t know enough to jump out. A few news bits to similarly depress you:

• 700 North American fish species risk extinction (Approximately 39% of described fish species of the continent are imperiled. )
• Will Central Africa’s Forest Wildlife Be Eaten into Extinction? (oh come on, do they really have to ask? We know they’ll all be just pictures in a book for our grandkids)
• Study: bird species will die off faster (More than 1,000 in danger of becoming extinct by 2100)
• Amphibian extinction may be worse than thought (one-third of the world’s 5,918 known amphibian species are classified as threatened with extinction and more than 170 species have likely gone extinct since 1980.)

“Many scientists, including Harvard University entomologist E.O. Wilson, believe Earth is in the middle of a mass extinction comparable to the one 65 million years ago that wiped out two-thirds of land species, including the dinosaurs. “