Category Archives: Biodiversity Loss

If we lose enough species, we’ll drive ourselves extinct as well

Chemical industrial farming is unsustainable. Why poison ourselves when pesticides don’t save more of our crops than in the past?

Posted on March 16, 2017 by

Pesticides, herbicides, and insecticides destroy soil, ecosystems, and a third of the crop is still lost to pests, just as in the many millennia of farming before chemicals. [ This is a book review of Dyer’s “Chasing the Red Queen”, … Continue reading →

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North American freshwater mussels are going extinct

Posted on November 14, 2016 by

Stokstad, E. 2012. Nearly Buried, Mussels Get a Helping Hand. Science Vol. 338, Issue 6109, pp. 876-878 [excerpts] Freshwater mussels are in trouble. They are the most endangered group of organisms in the United States, with most of their river … Continue reading →

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Are humans an invasive species?

Posted on October 22, 2016 by

Rob Jordan. April 5, 2016. Populations of early human settlers grew like an ‘invasive species,’ Stanford researchers find. Stanford University. When humans colonized South America, their populations grew like a typical invasive species – an initial explosive growth rapidly reached … Continue reading →

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Menhaden going extinct — the key food source at bottom of food web

Posted on October 4, 2016 by

[ This is a really long introduction so I can reply to a comment that menhaden are “neither overfished nor experiencing overfishing”.   Huh? Both their numbers and range are small compared to their original population. If there were a reduction, … Continue reading →

Posted in Biodiversity Loss, Extinction, Fisheries, Starvation | Tagged , , , , | 6 Comments

Humans driving species to extinction 1,000 times the natural rate

Posted on July 11, 2016 by

[ According to a paper published in Science the current rates of extinction are 1000 times the background rate. This estimate is higher than previous estimates is due to a more sophisticated analysis. Other extinction news: 2017-1-18 World’s primates facing … Continue reading →

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Vines are taking over forests

Posted on July 3, 2016 by

Laurance, W. October 5, 2013. Planet of the vines: Climbing plants are taking over. NewScientist. Giant vines are beginning to strangle Earth’s tropical forests, and it’s not just due to climate change. Gaze out over a tropical rainforest and the … Continue reading →

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Large animals driven extinct by human hunters still affect ecosystems today

Posted on July 1, 2016 by

Below is an excerpt/paraphrased of Michael Marshall’s 14 August 2013 NewScientist Ecosystems still feel the pain of ancient extinctions, the abstract of the original Nature Geoscience article, and future losses of large animals will affect tropical forests in the future. … Continue reading →

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E. O. Wilson to save humanity from extinction, get rid of religion

Posted on March 27, 2016 by

[ Below is an excerpt, out of order, from New Scientist’s 21 Jan 2015 interview with E.O. Wilson “Religious faith is dragging us down“. The extinctions we cause will kill us too, says the sociobiology pioneer – the best thing … Continue reading →

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Nearly a third of cacti threatened with extinction

Posted on March 3, 2016 by

Illegal trade contributes to placing cacti among world’s most threatened species – IUCN Red List 05 October 2015 | International news release Gland, Switzerland, 5 October 2015 (IUCN) – Thirty-one percent of cactus species are threatened with extinction, according to … Continue reading →

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Arctic ice melt to release 1 trillion pieces of plastic into sea – a major threat to marine life

Posted on June 5, 2015 by

[Also see September 2015: Plastic for dinner: A quarter of fish sold at markets contain human-made debris. Original article here] Lewis, R. May 27, 2014. Arctic ice melt to release 1 trillion pieces of plastic into sea Increasing ice melt … Continue reading →

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