Welcome to
Part Thirteen of Tick Tock the Climate Clock.
As an adjunct to this cheery little compendium of catastrophic climate
events, let’s take a look at what’s happening in the world of plants and
animals. Turns out, thirteen is an unlucky number for
many reasons, especially if you’re an endangered species facing
extinction. So let’s make a list because
they’re GOING, GOING, GONE!
The Iconic, Ironic Monarch Butterfly.
When you think of a butterfly, it’s likely that the Monarch comes to
mind. Not just a pretty face, the
Monarch symbolizes recovery for addicts, rebirth for Native Americans, and
immortality for the Chinese. But the reality for the Monarch is otherwise. The
number of these iconic butterflies that winter on the California coast on their
annual sojourn north has dropped 86 percent over the past year, to
0.6 percent of their historical average.
Up a Tree Frog.
According to a landmark study published recently in Science, a fungal disease called chytridiomycosis is decimating the amphibian world, contributing to
declines in over 500 species, of which 90 have gone extinct. The fungus disrupts the amphibians’ skin’s
ability to exchange oxygen and suffocates them, causing the worst loss of
biodiversity of any disease ever recorded.
Old Blue-Eyes.
Lemurs, including Eulemur flavifrons, the blue-eyed black lemur, are native only to Madagascar. Although Madagascar is, as a result of its size
and isolation, biodiverse, it’s also an island that is pushing the lemur to extinction. At last count, there are only about 1,000
blue-eyed black lemurs left in Madagascar.
According to the director of the Mulhouse Zoological and Botanical
Garden in France, “The threat they face is deforestation, which is common all
over the world but especially in Madagascar, because there it’s due to people
who are starving. They need to feed
their children, and they have no fuel but charcoal, which means burning trees.
They need houses, so they need to cut down trees. They need places to grow rice
to feed their families, which means cutting down trees.”
The Wayne Bobbitt Turtle Tragedy.
The last confirmed female Yangtze giant soft-shell turtle, the largest
freshwater turtle species in the world weighing about 220 pounds, died turtle-less
in a Chinese zoo this spring. The
species was once prevalent in China and Vietnam, but human activity and
poaching have reduced their numbers to just three. The 90-year-old female lived at the Suzhou
Zoo with her male partner, but his deadly fight with another male turtle decades
ago damaged his penis and rendered him unable to breed.
An Ice Flow! An Ice Flow! My Empire for an Ice Flow!
The Antarctic’s second-largest colony of emperor penguins collapsed in
2016, with more than 10,000 chicks lost.
Fortunately, many
of the adults relocated nearby. Nonetheless, scientists project drastic
declines in emperor penguin populations, as much as 30%, by the end of the
century, because of climate change. The
penguins can’t climb and rely on ice shelves as breeding grounds for their
chicks.
Gone Fishing or Fishing Gone?
An international team of ecologists and economists predicts that the
world’s supply of edible saltwater fish will be exhausted by 2048, due to
overfishing, pollution, habitat loss, and climate change. The trend is accelerating fast: 29% of edible fish and seafood species have already
declined by 90% -- a drop that means the collapse of these fisheries and bodes
ill for ocean biodiversity.
Hold That Tiger!
Climate change and rising sea levels may eventually destroy the
Sundarbans, 4,000 square miles of marshy land in Bangladesh and India that is
home to the Bengal tiger. The remaining cats
are among nearly 500,000 land species worldwide whose survival is now in
question because of habitat threats, according to the most recent UN climate
report.
My, You’re Certainly Crabby Today!
Migratory birds who stop on the shores of Delaware Bay to refuel on
horseshoe crab eggs before continuing their long flight north to the Canadian Arctic
are starving. The cause is the
overfishing of the crabs, whose meat is used for commercial bait and whose
blood is used in medical labs to detect bacteria. One of the migratory birds, the red knot, has
been listed as a threatened species. Since
2000, its numbers in some years have plunged as low as one-ninth of the level
in the 1980s, making their population of about 30,000 unsustainable.
In Sum… On
May 6, 2019, the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and
Ecosystem Services (IPBES), the United Nations’ expert nature panel, released
a devastating report on biodiversity loss. Per
the Washington Post:
One
million plant and animal species are on the verge of extinction, with alarming
implications for human survival, according to a United Nations report released on
Monday. The landmark report by seven
lead co-authors from universities across the world goes further than previous
studies by directly linking the loss of species to human activity. It also shows how those losses are undermining
food and water security, as well as human health. More plants and animals are threatened with
extinction now than any other period in human history, it concludes. Nature’s current rate of decline is
unparalleled, and the accelerating rate of extinctions “means grave impacts on
people around the world are now likely.”
Here is a
link to a PDF of the IPBES Global Assessment Summary for Policy Makers: https://www.ipbes.net/news/ipbes-global-assessment-summary-policymakers-pdf
And here
is a link to an interview with Bill McKibben and Elizabeth Kolbert, climate and
science writers, respectively, on the IPBES report: https://www.newyorker.com/news/the-new-yorker-interview/bill-mckibben-and-elizabeth-kolbert-on-the-un-extinction-report
And Finally (Pun Intended)… Here is an excerpt from an excellent
article written by Elizabeth Kolbert and published in The New Yorker 10 years ago:
Over
the past half-billion years, there have been at least twenty mass extinctions,
when the diversity of life on earth has suddenly and dramatically contracted.
Five of these—the so-called Big Five—were so devastating that they are usually
put in their own category. The first took place during the late Ordovician
period, nearly four hundred and fifty million years ago, when life was still
confined mainly to water. Geological records indicate that more than eighty per
cent of marine species died out. The fifth occurred at the end of the
Cretaceous period, sixty-five million years ago. The end-Cretaceous event
exterminated not just the dinosaurs but seventy-five per cent of all species on
earth.
The
significance of mass extinctions goes beyond the sheer number of organisms
involved. In contrast to ordinary, or so-called background, extinctions, which
claim species that, for one reason or another, have become unfit, mass
extinctions strike down the fit and the unfit at once. For example,
brachiopods, which look like clams but have an entirely different anatomy,
dominated the ocean floor for hundreds of millions of years. In the third of
the Big Five extinctions—the end-Permian—the hugely successful brachiopods were
nearly wiped out, along with trilobites, blastoids, and eurypterids. (In the
end-Permian event, more than ninety per cent of marine species and seventy per
cent of terrestrial species vanished; the event is sometimes referred to as
“the mother of mass extinctions” or “the great dying.”)
Once
a mass extinction occurs, it takes millions of years for life to recover, and
when it does it generally has a new cast of characters; following the end-Cretaceous
event, mammals rose up (or crept out) to replace the departed dinosaurs. In
this way, mass extinctions, though missing from the original theory of
evolution, have played a determining role in evolution’s course; as Richard
Leakey has put it, such events “restructure the biosphere” and so “create the
pattern of life.” It is now generally agreed among biologists that another mass
extinction is under way. Though it’s difficult to put a precise figure on the
losses, it is estimated that, if current trends continue, by the end of this
century as many as half of earth’s species will be gone.
Have a nice
day, Homo (not so) sapiens! Count yourself as another endangered species.
Keep it
real!
Marilyn
Comments
Post a Comment