10 Most Endangered Species

[RuthH]

Originally Posted by kate7bell

Am I right in recalling someone (may be David Attenburgh) mentioning that in present and near future days we are and will be seeing an exinction rate of species greater than ever before.... including the KT boundary period?

It is a question rather than a statement, sure I heard it as stuck in mind, but cant quarentee the source... thoughts anyone?

kate

Might have been Bill Bryson in A Short History of Nearly Everything (another v good book).

I had no idea Napoleons were threatened. Just a few days ago I was face to face with one.

[Dr Stevil]

Originally Posted by John Nortcliff

The answer is for us all to stop breeding and preferably 'lose' several hundred million people to reduce pressure on the planets resources.

That's obviously not going to happen, so what's next?

Not voluntarily, no. But what our generation is extremely likely to witness (and this comes straight from the mouths of senior honchos at the W.H.O. in a Radio 4 interview earlier this year) is a global pandemic the likes of which will make the influenza epidemic of 1918-1919 (which killed anywhere between 25 to 40 million people worldwide) seem like a walk in the park.

Back to the original topic though...
Great Whites and the Humphead wrasse are to be afforded a measure of CITES "protection" by a global requirement for trade permits in these species, according to the latest news

"Rules on other species have also been introduced recently; all shipments of Latin America's bigleaf mahogany have required CITES export permits since November 2003." (Same source)

[Dr Stevil]

Originally Posted by kate7bell

Am I right in recalling someone (may be David Attenburgh) mentioning that in present and near future days we are and will be seeing an exinction rate of species greater than ever before.... including the KT boundary period?

It is a question rather than a statement, sure I heard it as stuck in mind, but cant quarentee the source... thoughts anyone?

kate

The book you're looking for is The Sixth Extinction by Richard Leakey and Roger Lewin (Doubleday, 1995)

HTH
Steve

[Dr Stevil]

Originally Posted by Chris Hall

So as we are all to blame, what can we do to put it right?

I would love to know.

As I know sharks are animals close to your heart (and from those pix, quite close to your bollocks as well ) could I perhaps encourage you and Liz and as many folk as possible from YD to join The Shark Trust and help support efforts to do something about the loss of over 110 million of these superb creatures every year?

[serina]

TV is a great medium for a messege of sizable proportion and influence..... I remember seeing a prog on shark fin soup and the camera showed a shark hunting ship that was catchin them............... it was the bit of obserdity in the absolute, to see them just having fins cut off and then the creatures just discarded as no use (as in thats it, we have ended your existance, for our own reasons being some of the dicks in our species are flagging a bit).

A good meteor storm (or one sizable one) might be a good idea for our lot to be remembered how small we really are in the bigger picture of vulnerabilty.

there, better now! thanks x
Ser

[Mr T.]

Being of, invariably, rude heath and being sound in wind and limb, I don't have a great deal to do with doctors (though my wife's a nurse), the NHS or the taking of medicines - I had an ingrowing toe-nail removed at the age of 12 (under a general) and that's the last I had to do with them. It's not that I'm in anyway scared of them, or dentists for that matter: it's just that, as a rule, I don't get ill (he wrote, tempting fate).

But what I have noticed is that if certain people (the Chinese, Koreans, Indians, Malays et al) would stop eating tigers, pandas and black bears etc. or when not eating them, cooking up some scientifically unsupportable voodoo (for that's precisely what it is) that promotes that grated/powdered tiger balls, bear's gaul-bladder etc. is a cure for any form of malady or ailment - they maybe, just maybe, these species would stand a fighting chance of not becoming extinct.

Alas, one of the things which prevents any half-decent redress of the situation is the bleeding-hearts and artists of the PC brigade with their clarion cry "You can't say that!"

Bollocks - I just did, and stick by it. Go ahead: prove me wrong

[Lou]

Well, Bren. As one I would suspect you would normally place within the "PC-brigade" you will hear no such cry from me....

[Dr Stevil]

What really p***** me off is when members of this PC-Brigade bang on about "But it's their right to hunt/kill/mail/obliterate etc" Yeah??? Well what about my right to see such animals alive in their natural habitat eh?

In fact I feel so strongly about this that it was one tosser banging on about "rights" to do anything they damn well pleased which led me to bin my old BSAC club. I get sooooooooo sick of hearing how people have all these "rights" to do this and "rights" to do that, flaming bleeding heart liberals, make me want to puke they do . Hmmm... must come down off that fence sometime one of these days eh

[Moray]

I agree, John, that overpopulation is the major ill. The planet is not orientated to supporting the amount of human life on it.

A pandemic, as suggested by Steve, seems more than likely: signs in that direction are already developing (AIDS, new forms of flu, filoviruses etc).

Only we think are indestructible as a race. We COULD be wiped out, and the planet will then happily continue along without us, certainly better off than it was before....

moray

[h2oonfilm.com]

The rise and fall of the human species.... getting closer to completion, I feel. Iceages collapse at a critical point and swing to global warming, till that collapses and swings towards iceage etc etc.
We have only been around for a fraction of the time that this planet has, but have come so far quickly and getting quicker... from hosecart to spacetravel in only 1 hundred years (ish).
So like all the great civilizations of the ancient world, we will bust (bigtime), no doubt......... It is just a matter of how many other species we f... up on the way.

awareness is a great thing and evolved thinking.. so can still be active in education and influence to look after much in the meantime. me thinks.

cheers
stephen