Draining The Gene Pool

Endangered species

A milestone effort by the United Nations to assess the Earth’s biodiversity appears to be going unnoticed by the U.S. Congress.

The new UN Environment Program’s Global Biodiversity Assessment, compiled by 1,500 scientists from 50 nations, is the first global attempt to assess the health of the Earth’s gene pool.

Since the 19th century, flowering plants and mammals have gone extinct at rates 50 to 100 times faster than in prehistoric times, the report said.

“By conservative estimates,” 112 birds and mammals have gone extinct in the last 200 years, most of which were from freshwater systems or archipelagos. In the last 400 years, 484 animals and 654 plants have gone extinct.

Tony Janetos, director of NASA’s land-use programs, said the decline in biodiversity was “outside the range of anything ever experienced before,” including prehistoric mass extinctions.

At least 4,000 plants and 5,400 animals currently are threatened by extinction, the report said. For tropical forests, scientists estimate that the number of plants and animals threatened by extinction over the next 25-30 years ranges from 2 percent to 25 percent, or 1,000-10,000 times higher than the expected extinction rates.

The conversion of wilderness into farmlands is the single greatest cause of extinctions, the report said.

Among the other causes of biodiversity loss: rising populations, increased migration, water and air pollution, and human failure to consider the long-term implications of habitat destruction.

The report recommends establishing large conservation reserves and gene banks; reducing consumption of resources; and creating incentives to conserve biodiversity, such as tax breaks and environmental bonds.

Meanwhile, proposals in Congress would drain more wetlands, water down the Endangered Species Act, reduce environmental protection.

, DataTimes