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| Subject: | | Re: a decade of loss |
| From: | |
Southlander
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posted
Fri, Oct 30 2009, 9:36am
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The Extinction of the Golden Toad FINAL
Extinction is a natural process- approx. 2% to 4% of the species that have ever lived survive today. However, the extinction rate today is estimated to be between 1000 and 10,000 times higher than the natural extinction rate (Chanson, 2004) especially hard-hit by the recent wave of global extinctions- around 122 species of amphibians have gone extinct since 1980, and one-third of the remaining 6000 species are threatened with extinction (Stuart, 2004). Only 12 percent of birds and 23 percent of mammals are in the same position. This statistic is sobering enough; it is even more startling when one considers that scientists have only named about 1.75 million species of plant and animal life out of the 13-14 million species that are believed to exist (Hilton-Taylor, 2000). Pollution is not the only factor threatening wildlife- a team of researchers concluded that if climate warming proceeds unchecked, 15% to 37% of the 1103 plant and animal species they examined will disappear by 2050 ( Sreenivasan, 2004).
This is an excerpt from the link |
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