According to a recent analysis, the sixth mass extinction of wildlife on Earth is accelerating. More than 500 species of land animals are on the brink of extinction and are likely to be lost within 20 years; the same number were lost over the last century. Scientists say that without human destruction of nature, this rate of loss would have taken thousands of years, and they warn that this may be a tipping point for the collapse of civilisation.
The analysis, published in the journal – Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences -looked at data on 29,000 land vertebrate species compiled by the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) Red List of Threatened Species and BirdLife International. Scientists identified 515 species with populations below 1,000 and about half of these had fewer than 250 individuals remaining.
Mass extinction is usually defined as a loss of about three-quarters of all species in existence across the entire Earth over a “short” geological period. Given the vast amount of time since life first evolved on the planet, “short” is defined as anything less than 2.8 million years.
Source: earth.org
