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Yes, believe it or not, from the comfort of our home, we are living in the sixth vague of massive extinction. As you are taking your morning coffee, eggs n’ muffin next to a hot fire, a vague of massive extinction of species is undergoing. The last vague of massive extinction took away the dinosaurs !!

Now that deserve a little coverage, doesn’ it?

The most severe mass extinction occurred at the end of the Permian period when 96% of all species perished.

What could be causing this massive extinction. We’ve all heard of these issues years after years : loss of habitat (forests), increase in water pollution (accumulation of hundred of toxic substance found in rivers, lakes and seas around the world), military activities and radars underwater1. And what else we are unaware of? Even humans have hundred of toxic substance found in their fat cells and urine. Imagine what these chemicals would do to a much weaker organism.

Increase in temperature by 1 or 2 degree does not by itself cause massive extinction. But the combination of multiple effects can put species at risk and on top of that if you add heat-wave or rapid temperature drop, you ca (that is just an example).

As a population we are all aware that something is going bad, but we are so much trying to live our day-to-day chores that our lifestyles don’t allow us to pursue and confront the problem – more over if we do so we are considered dangerous terrorist – like Greenpeace activists.

One of the reason of extinction is water pollution. This is personally the problem that I find the most scary. Look at us human. To get a drink of water, we have to process it because our water has become so much polluted that we cannot drink directly from it. Not long ago, the Roman empire was bringing safe water into its city via aqueduct from natural sources. Take for example the St-Laurence river. There are thousand of manufactures pouring their waste-water into it, some of them neurotoxic substance, some other heavy metals. Yes there are chrome manufacture on the border of the St-Laurence river that throws away heavy metal into it. Native Americans whose diet is primarily fish from those place are dying from cancer and malformations. Image fragile wildlife – they don’t have sanitation equipment.

Moreover, rainfall can carry some of these toxic chemicals into wild forest. For example Atrazine.

Statistics

At threat are 41 percent of amphibian species, 33 percent of reef-building corals, 25 percent of mammals, 20 percent of plants and 13 percent of birds. 4

Further reading and articles

http://www.amazon.ca/The-Sixth-Extinction-Unnatural-History/dp/0805092994

 

1. Lethal Sounds – The use of military sonar poses a deadly threat to whales and other marine mammals
   http://www.nrdc.org/wildlife/marine/sonar.asp

2. http://www.bbc.co.uk/nature/extinction_events

3. Coral Reef Loss Suggests Global Extinction Event
http://www.worldwatch.org/node/5960

4. http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/environment/9342461/Rio-20-World-faces-mass-extinction-of-wildlife-UN-warns.html