“Most people don’t realize this,” he said, “but we are smack-dab in the middle of the age of discovery for mammals.”

Yet as he and other biologists are all too aware, we are also smack-dab in the middle of a great species smack down, an age of mass extinctions for which we humans are largely to blame. Estimates of annual species loss vary widely and are merely crude guesstimates anyway, but most researchers agree that, as a result of habitat destruction, climate volatility, pesticide runoff, ocean dumping, jet-settinginvasive species and other “anthropogenic” effects on the environment, the extinction rate is many times above nature’s chronic winnowing. “Our best guess is that it’s hugely above baseline, a hundred times above baseline,” said John Robinson, an executive vice president at the Wildlife Conservation Society. “The problem is, we’ve only described an estimated 15 percent of all species on Earth, so most of what’s going extinct are things we didn’t even know existed.”
Bron:The New York Times

Ondanks dat wij, de mens, jaarlijks verschillende dieren letterlijk wegvagen van de aardbodem, lijkt de natuur steeds een ander diersoort tevoorschijn te toveren. Dit geeft ons natuurlijk niet het recht om andere diersoorten pardoes weg te vagen, maar het is toch wel een straaltje hoop in een duistere wolk van uitroeing.