14 DAY TRIAL // Throughout the history of Earth, countless plant and animal species have appeared and disappeared, because not only individuals, but species too get old and become extinct. Best case scenario, they live on in related species, that may later evolve in new plant or animal groups. Very few species resisted throughout the eons unchanged - they are called living fossils or relict species.
However, most species simply disappeared with the passing of geological times, some of them being hit by cataclysms, like volcanic eruptions, earthquakes, asteroid impacts, diseases or clime changes. This way, clime change sealed the fate of the huge tree ferns that dominated the Carboniferous period, 300 Ma ago, leaving behind huge coal deposits. An asteroid impact may have ended the world of the dinosaurs 65 Ma ago.
Early people, while in the stage of hunters-gatherers, did not impact considerably on the wildlife. Nevertheless, today, human activity has triggered the fastest extinction rate in Earth's history. Increasingly sophisticated ritual practices, a refinement of modern society, and fashion combined with snobbery have all made of humans turned the number one factor responsible for species disappearance.
In the last three decades, 33% of the natural places have disappeared: over 10% of the forests, 30% of the ecosystems and 50% of the freshwater ecosystems, due to increased agriculture and industry contamination as well as increased water consumption.
The most beautifully adorned animals in nature became fewer, while some disappeared altogether or are on the brink of extinction. In the last 500 years, 844 vertebrate species have disappeared because of human activity. This happened as a consequence of sea voyages and the development of increasingly complex fire arms, that allowed animal slaughtering. The most alarming issue is precisely the rhythm in which species become extinct: in the past too species have disappeared, but back then it happened in intervals of thousands of years and not over short periods of time like now.
Navigators, often to be found at sea on voyages lasting many months and even years, anchored on the wild shores of isolated islands, and killed with sticks, sometimes for pure pleasure, flightless birds and giant tortoises.
The giant dove called Dodo bird (Raphus cucullatus) has turned into the symbol for all disappeared species. The last one of these flightless birds died in Mauritius, in 1680. Extinction came about mostly because of continuous practices of catching these birds and then salting them in barrels.
As a rule, most of the endangered species live on islands. 85 of the 94 species of birds known to have disappeared in the last 400 years also lived on islands. Many giant tortoises from the islands disappeared because of human hunting. The takahe and kiwi of New Zealand, Kagu of New Caledonia or the Hawaii goose are amongst the most menaced bird species right now.
With all that, mainland animals go through the same danger as the ones living on islands do. Out of all Siberian tigers, only 180-200 individuals survive in the wild, while the southern Chinese tiger has been declared extinct last year.
Amongst the sea creatures, the sea turtles are extremely menaced. In the last 35 years, over 95 amphibian species were gone. About 11 % of the bird species are threatened with extinction. Over a quarter of the 400 butterfly species to be found in Europe are menaced, 19 of them being in what is deemed "extreme situations".
The habitat loss
Over 70 % of the fishing places are so exploited that breeding does not compensate for human exploitation. This is also the case of the Northern Atlantic where the cod, hake, haddock and flounder populations decreased by 95 % between 1989 and 1994. Annually, 20-40 million tonnes of sea creatures are returned to sea wounded or dead. These are accidental captures collected by fishing nets.
Today, there are about 8,000 zones protecting fauna, plus 40,000 sites protecting the habitat worldwide. Together they make for 10 % of the Earth's surface.
Indeed, habitat loss is the greatest menace for a species, and the most difficult to impede. The human demographic boom pushes people in places that once belonged to wildlife. So is the case with tropical forests, about which many say will no longer exist 30 years from now. This is clearly a bad thing, as many resources would be lost once that happens. One quarter of the drugs employed by the western world come from the tropical forest. Tropical forests make for 7 % of the land surface, and for 80 % of plant biodiversity. In India, deforestation has led to a drier clime in some zones, and flooding in others. Annually, 1% of the tropical forests disappears and, with it, many species of plants, birds, reptiles and insects - countless suffer this fate even before getting a scientific name.
In Africa, cattle raisers overexploit rural areas. Many large animals, like elephants, hippopotamuses, rhinoceroses, buffaloes, lions, crocodiles, large antelopes, wild pigs and primates cannot adapt to the forms of rural development.
It is expected that, by the end of the century, human population will have increased by 5 billion, and this growth will occur mostly in developing countries, that were until now the last salvation for the fauna of the planet.
Swamps are menaced as well, being drained in order to build homes or make agriculture possible. In the last 100 years, 90 % of Europe's pastures have been turned into croplands. In the UK, this meant a drop by 64 % in the number of thrushes. In Madagascar, the growing population and poverty lead to the turning of forests into paddies, and because of this many lemurs are left without their natural habitat.
In Botswana, wildebeests transmit aphthous fever to domestic cattle and this is why a 1,300 km (800 mi) barrier was built to impede wildebeests from coming into contact with domestic cattle. This hinders their migration and the number of wildebeests is plummeted from 250,000 to 30,000, as the antelopes die of thirst. The number of zebras in the same area also registered a drop from 45,000 to 7,000.
Exotic species
The colonization of Hawaii, that took place 1,600 years ago, and subsequent agriculture done in the area eliminated 35 species of birds. Cats brought by Europeans in Australia and New Zealand turned feral, and together with red foxes, attacked 64 species of endangered Australian marsupials and New Zealand endemic birds. The island fauna is also upturned by pigs, goats, rabbits, dogs, rats and other human associated species.
When fishermen introduced the Nile perch in Lake Victoria in order to increase productivity, the result was that these predatory fish eliminated 200 of the 300 fish species of the lake.
Hunting
Hunting is another factor of species disappearance. With the passing of centuries, hunters eliminated lions from Greece and Mesopotamia, hippopotamuses from Nubia, bears, beavers, wolves, lynxes and wild boars from the UK and aurouchs from eastern Europe.
In 1824, the first white colonized the future Natal province of South Africa. Back then, the fauna was so rich that, over just one year, 62,000 wildebeest and zebra skins were exported through the Durban port, beside 19 tonnes of ivory. By 1878, when the white population had reached the number of 30,000, very few game had remained. The quagga zebra was extinct, besides other two large antelope species.
In 1950, in order to introduce cattle raising in the Huila province (Angola, by then Portuguese colony), the famous Diploma Legilsativo no 2242 allowed free hunting in that region. The following massacre meant 1,000 rhinos, thousands of giraffes, and tens of thousands of wildebeests, zebras and buffaloes. In just two and a half year, no animal was left in the area.
In the surroundings areas of Kruger National Park, the bantustans population density is of 70-100 inhabitants per square km, all of them living in deep poverty so it's no wonder poaching is not something these people would give up on. In fact, these rural people are so good at tracking down animals that they make the best rangers. With the African rural exodus, their knowledge is lost. In Africa, diseases, severe droughts, civil wars, and neglect of the rural areas are factors that boost poaching. The poachers kill 20,000-30,000 animals annually in the Serengeti National Park alone.
The impact of poaching between 1979 and 1990 in the Marromeu Delta, Mozambique looks something like this: from 55,000 buffaloes, 3,696 were left; from 2,720 zebras to 1,000; from 1,770 hippopotamuses to 260, and from 45,000 waterbucks (a large antelope) to 4,480. In the natural reservation of Fosse aux Lions (Togo, western Africa), the population of forest elephants plummeted due to poaching from 130 in March 1991 to 25 in 1992 in less than one year.
During the Cold War, many African civil wars were fueled by the Soviet Union and the Western Powers, and both sides introduced on the continent large amounts of sophisticated weapons; as it happens, many of them were often pointed towards wild animals in order to feed hungry troops and to obtain more funds for weapons from trading ivory, rhino horns and other animal products. This way, the African wild ass has been pushed to extinction in Somalia. Sadly, all this did not end with the Cold War; the weapons are still there.
Wars and the increased numbers of fireguns in the hands of regular people, the high number of refugees accompanied by the rapid growth of natality, aggravated contamination and tourism also menace many species. Motorboats hurt many dolphins and manatees, while the noise produced by boats underwater interferes with the dolphins' delicate sonar.
Animal trade
The more valued a species is, the more costly are individuals or their organs - this is how most species enter into a vortex of extinction. The increasing prices motivate poachers to assume higher risks in order to capture and kill them.
The price of a Siberian tiger boomed from $9,000 to $24,000 in 10 years, an amount paid not only for the skin, but also for the bones, eyes, whiskers, teeth, inner organs and sexual organs, all of which are highly valued in traditional Oriental medicine.
The trade with elephant ivory, rhino horns, tiger products and others is a business evaluated to billions of dollars, the second illegal business after drug trafficking. In 1994, practicing traditional Chinese medicine destroyed the almost unbelievable number of 20 million sea horses, a fact that led to a drop by 60 % of their population in southeastern Asia. The golden parakeet (Guaruba guarouba) costs $500 on the Brazilian black market. Outside Brazil, it is sold at $2,000. Simply because of that, we must not forget that for each wild cat, chimp, orangutan or gibbon reaching the pet trade, 10 to 20 counterparts of the same species have died.
The CITES convention is a powerful weapon impeding illegal trafficking of endangered species and their products (skins, ivory, shells, bones, horns, wood). Many Zoos have special breeding programs aimed to saving endangered species. This how the St Lucia parrot (Amazona versicolor) was saved by the Jersey Zoo (UK). The number of red wolves in the US grew from 17 to over 60, all due to such programs. Still, many of the captive animals cannot be released into the wild because, for instance, such predators would no longer be able to hunt.
In some south African countries, the state ceded exclusive control over fauna. Rural communities in 10 of the 31 fauna surveillance zones in Zambia received rights over the fauna: this significantly reduced the poaching and the fauna can now be said to be recovering. The implication of local people helped the survival of the black rhino and the desert elephant in Kaokoland, Namibia, in other African successes like Kankwane, South Africa.
Another factor involved in man-generated extinctions is the spread of pesticides, which endanger hundreds of species, directly or indirectly (DDT makes eagles lay eggs with too thin shells, that cannot be incubated).
The whale case
A worrying and unnecessary slaughter is occurring with the whales. Since 1986, an international ban on whaling has been ratified, but two of the so-called most civilized nations, Japan and Norway, refused to sign it and keep hunting whales (in Japan, whale meat is delivered to Japanese restaurants under the umbrella of a shameful "scientific" program ).
Whales deliver oil (used for lamp illuminating or making candles, soap, margarine), meat (especially appreciated by the Japanese and Koreans), skin (for handbags, bicycle saddles), baleens (once used for making corsets and umbrellas), liver (rich in vitamin A and D), tendons (for racket strings or surgery threads), bones, blood (for fertilizers), teeth (in the case of the sperm whale, used for making carvings, dices, buttons).
Between 1835 and 1872, about 300,000 whales were hunted and killed worldwide. The invention of the trans-harpoon cannon in 1868 started a genuine whale massacre. The new fire power harpoon was carrying a grenade exploding when hitting the animal. Fast moving whales, like the blue whale and its relatives (rorquals) could also be hunted now, not just the slower right whales, gray whales and sperm whales.
Between 1930 and 1931, 28,325 blue whales were killed, just 20 between 1964 and 1965 and from 1965 to 1966 just 4! Overall, in 1950, 55,795 whales were killed worldwide, in 1975 - 37,000; and in 1981 - only 15,000.
The whale populations are recovering right now, but the slow process is hampered by the activity of the Japanese whaling fleet. In the 30s alone, around 20,000 blue whales were killed annually, to the extent that now the worldwide population is of about 5,000. The population of the Atlantic northern right whale is just of 2,000. There are about 82,700 baleen whales currently.