The Annihilation of Nature: Human Extinction of Birds and Mammals

249 Pages·2015·7.58 MB·English

by  Gerardo Ceballos

Gerardo Ceballos, Anne H. Ehrlich, and Paul R. Ehrlich
WITH ORIGINAL ART BY DING LI YONG
THE ANNIHILATION OF NATURE
Human Extinction of Birds and Mammals
© 2015 Johns Hopkins University Press
All rights reserved. Published 2015
Printed in China on acid-free paper
9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
Johns Hopkins University Press
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Ceballos, Gerardo.
The annihilation of nature : human extinction of birds and mammals / Gerardo
Ceballos, Anne H. Ehrlich, and Paul R. Ehrlich; with original art by Ding Li
Yong.
pages cm
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-1-42141718-9 (hardcover : alk. paper) — ISBN 978-1-4214-1719-
6 (electronic) — ISBN 1-4214-1718-9 (hardcover : alk. paper) — ISBN 1-4214-
1719-7 (electronic) 1. Nature—Effect of human beings on. 2. Extinction
(Biology). 3. Rare birds. 4. Rare mammals. 5. Biodiversity conservation. I.
Ehrlich, Anne H. II. Ehrlich, Paul R. III. Title.
GF75.C43 2015
591.3’8—dc23 2014041105
A catalog record for this book is available from the British Library.
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Johns Hopkins University Press uses environmentally friendly book materials,
including recycled text paper that is composed of at least 30 percent post-
consumer waste, whenever possible.
In memory of our friend Navjot Sodhi, a brilliant conservation biologist who
started on this journey with us but could not finish.
It was the best of times, it was the worst of times,
it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief,
it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of Light, it was the season
of Darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair, we had
everything before us, we had nothing before us.
Charles Dickens, A Tale of Two Cities
Contents
Preface
Acknowledgments
1 : THE LEGACY
2 : NATURAL EXTINCTIONS
3 : THE ANTHROPOCENE
4 : LONG - SILENCED SONGS
5 : BIRDS IN TROUBLE
6 : MAMMALS LOST
7 : VANISHING MAMMALS
8 : WHY IT ALL MATTERS
9 : DRIVERS OF DEATH
10 : BEYOND MOURNING
Appendix. Common and Scientific Names of Plants and Animals
Mentioned in the Book
Recommended Reading
Index
Preface
HUMANITY HAS UNLEASHED a massive and escalating assault on all living things
on this planet. The purpose of this book is to shine a spotlight on the onslaught,
focusing on losses of the animals that are most familiar to people: birds and
mammals. The roots of this destruction run deep through time. Human hunting
and other activities were responsible for pushing populations of animals to
extinction long before the agricultural revolution, which began about ten
thousand years ago. Today, however, our collective assault on animals, plants,
and microbes has reached such a horrendous level that any alarm call we might
sound will be too faint to match the tragedy that is unfolding. The alarm must be
amplified. Listen to our stories. Learn what’s happening, and demand change.
In the past century or so, both the population size and technological
capabilities of Homo sapiens have increased spectacularly, and this is the root
cause of the rapid acceleration in human-caused species extinctions,
precipitating what is now called the sixth great extinction wave. That label is
based on powerful evidence that human actions may devastate the living world
to a similar or even greater extent than did any of the five great extinction waves
that demolished biodiversity, ending geological periods in distant prehistory.
Those previous five extinction waves, which we describe in chapter 2, were
unconnected to any supposed intelligent species; they were due to natural events
that eliminated as much as 90 percent of Earth’s flora and fauna in each
occurrence. Each time, life recovered over many millions of years, producing a
new array of life-forms. The last great extinction event occurred about 65
million years ago, long before the first upright, small-brained human ancestors
moved onto the savannas of Africa.
Only about fifty Tasmanian orangebellied parrots still exist in the wild.
The decimation of life-forms that is under way today is unlike the others
because it is human induced and will have extremely serious consequences for
humanity. The sixth extinction wave is the first to occur since the evolution of
Homo sapiens. Because of humanity’s success in populating and dominating the
world, this new extinction spasm is proceeding rapidly and unfolding virtually
everywhere. This new wave may also be a harbinger of the end of our global
civilization, because the endangered populations and species of microbes, plants,
and nonhuman animals are not just our only known living companions in the
universe, but are working parts of life-support systems on which civilization
depends.
The current extinction crisis and the risks it poses to humanity have been
clear to scientists for a long time, but they are still almost always ignored, or
even ridiculed, by others, including those who govern us. Vital statistics such as
estimates of the number of species that have gone extinct or of the number of
populations that have disappeared can be intellectually impressive. They don’t,
however, seem to carry the emotional impact to the public that the loss of
biodiversity has for those of us who are deeply familiar with the impoverishment
of nature. It is rather like the way, for most of us, that the many thousands of
violent human deaths of strangers we hear about each year are regrettable, but
they do not convey the emotional impact of the demise of a close friend or loved
one.
To gain support for conservation initiatives and for maintaining the essential
natural services on which humanity depends, it seems essential to communicate
to the public and politicians the emotional side of the plight of biodiversity and
to connect that predicament to human well-being. That, beyond giving the bare
statistics, is what we attempt to do with this book on the endangerment and
extinction of birds and mammals, the groups of animals with which most of us
empathize.
We hope we can help you relate to the fate of the last wild Spix’s macaw, a
male that searched fruitlessly for a mate until it disappeared from the savanna of
northeastern Brazil in 2000. We pray that we can make you care about that
weird, wonderful, and poisonous mammal, the duck-billed platypus. We believe
we can help you understand what a tragedy it would be if we lost the dwindling
and little-known Cross River gorillas.
This book describes the horrors that have befallen too many of the world’s
birds and mammals and threatens too many more in a rapidly deteriorating
situation. We want to familiarize you with the stories of our feathered and furry
relatives—species that people have either expunged from Earth or are in the
process of exterminating. We want to give you a feel for what interesting
creatures they were and are, and recruit you to help stop an ongoing biotic
genocide.
You needn’t be a professional biologist to contribute. Indeed, in the 1930s the
great American naturalist Aldo Leopold promoted the importance of wildlife
research as a hobby for laypeople. More recently, a wonderful woman, Marj
Andrews, in Queensland, Australia, has impressed biologists looking into the
status of the Eungella honeyeater, a bird species described only thirty years ago,
which has a tiny range. Marj, now in her eighties, had been making meticulous
field notes on this and other species as the area around her was being logged,
converted into farmland, and covered with strip mines. She produced an
invaluable record of the biology of one interesting species and the fate of local
birds under human pressure. Many amateurs like Marj are contributing to
scientific knowledge about the fate of Earth’s biodiversity, and we hope to
recruit more into doing it.
But first, we’ll try to describe the vast extent of Earth’s macroscopic (visible)
biodiversity—how many different kinds of plants and animals share the planet
with us and make it hospitable to human life. We’ll try to present this book with
as little technical jargon as possible. We’ll be consistent in our use of common
names, while including a full list of the Latinized “scientific” specific names
(each of two parts, a generic, or genus, name followed by the “trivial” name, as
in Homo sapiens) in the appendix. Having the scientific names handy should
make it easier for you to learn more about particular creatures. Internet searches
for those names will work in most cases.
We also provide recommended reading with brief annotations for each
chapter at the end of the book. We have given weights and measures in the
metric system, but also include English measures in parentheses for the benefit
of those of us educated in countries that still resist the tide of universal metric
usage. In this book we use the word “discover” for species when they are first
identified scientifically. Of course, many indigenous groups knew much about
most of the species described here long before the first Western naturalist or
explorer ever collected a specimen.
A special note: we have dedicated this book to our friend and colleague,
Professor Navjot Sodhi, who was arguably the leading conservation biologist in
southern Asia. Navjot started the book with us, but died suddenly at the age of
49, after making substantial contributions to this effort. We found finishing the
book without his expertise and renowned sense of humor a sorrowful task. The
world will miss his valiant efforts to save biodiversity. All royalties from
publication will be donated to the Navjot Sodhi Memorial Fund, Rocky
Mountain Biological Laboratory, Crested Butte, Colorado. Those funds will
support the work of young conservation biologists.