Forests razed can grow back, polluted air and water can be cleaned-but extinction is forever. And we're not talking about losing just a few species. In fact, conservationists quietly acknowledge that we've entered an age of triage, when we might have to decide which species can truly be saved.
The worst-case scenarios of habitat loss and climate change-and that's the pathway we seem to be on-show the planet losing hundreds of thousands to million of species, many of which we haven't even discovered yet. The result could be a virtual genocide of much of the animal world and an irreversible impoverishment of our planet. Humans would survive, but we would have doomed ourselves to what naturalist E.O. Wilson calls the Eremozoic Era-the Age of Loneliness.
So if you care about tigers and tamarins, rhinos and orangutans, if you believe Earth is more than just a home for 6.7 billion human beings and counting, then you should be scared. But fear shouldn't leave us paralyze. Environmental groups worldwide are responding with new methods to new threats to wildlife.
In hot spots like Madagascar and Brazil, conservationists are working with locals on the ground, ensuring that the protection of endangered species is tied to the welfare of the people who live closest to them. A strategy known as avoided deforestation goes further, incentivizing environmental protection by putting a price on the carbon locked in rain forests and allowing countries to trade credits in an international market, provided that the carbon stays in the trees and is not cut or burned.
And as global warming forces animals to migrate in order to escape changing climates, conservationists are looking to create protected corridors that would give the species room to roam. It's uncertain that any of this will stop the sixth extinction wave, let alone preserve the biodiversity we still enjoy, but we have no choice but to try. "We have a window of opportunity," says Kassie Siegel, director of the climate, energy and air program of the Center for Biological Diversity (CBD). "But it's slamming shut."
And as global warming forces animals to migrate in order to escape changing climates, conservationists are looking to create protected corridors that would give the species room to roam. It's uncertain that any of this will stop the sixth extinction wave, let alone preserve the biodiversity we still enjoy, but we have no choice but to try. "We have a window of opportunity," says Kassie Siegel, director of the climate, energy and air program of the Center for Biological Diversity (CBD). "But it's slamming shut."
This post is republished from the article entitled "The New Age of Extinction" by Bryan Walsh in Time Magazine, April 13, 2009.
Re-Written byZARIL FAIZAL BIN ZARAL GAFFAR
Politeknik Kota Kinabalu, Sabah.
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