Hypocratic towards biodiversity

THERE is increasing concern about biodiversity losses.

Species are becoming extinct at an alarming rate and this has huge implications for the future of all life-forms, including ourselves. The end of a year seems like a good time to have a look at the bigger picture.

To start with a really big perspective, since the beginning of life on the planet, there are five major extinction events, and many minor ones, in the fossil record. It’s presumed they were caused by environmental changes, particularly climate change, and these may well have been precipitated by things like increases in volcanic activity or an asteroid strike. Today we appear to be in the opening stages of a sixth mass extinction event which most experts predict will be larger than any of the previous five. This one is being triggered not by the impact of an asteroid but by the impact of humans on the planet.