Earth's sixth mass extinction advancing, scientists warn

Wildlife dying due to habitat destruction, overhunting, toxic pollution and invasion by alien species, climate change

A biological destruction of wildlife in recent years hints at a sixth mass extinction in Earth's history and it is feared to be more intense than the previous ones.



According to scientists, both common and rare species, including billions of regional or local population, have been lost. Human overpopulation and overconsumption is to be blamed for the disaster incurred since there's hardly any time to act, reported Guardian.

Professor Gerardo Ceballos, at the Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México, who led the report, said, "The situation has become so bad it would not be ethical not to use strong language."

Previous studies have shown species are becoming extinct at a significantly faster rate than for millions of years before, but even so extinctions remain relatively rare giving the impression of a gradual loss of biodiversity.

The scientists found that a third of the thousands of species losing populations are not currently considered endangered and that up to 50% of all individual animals have been lost in recent decades. Detailed data is available for land mammals, and almost half of these have lost 80% of their range in the last century. The scientists figured that billions of populations of mammals, birds, reptiles and amphibians have been lost all over the planet leading them to say a sixth mass extinction has already progressed further than was thought, Guardian further reported.



On prospects not looking good the scientists said, "All signs point to ever more powerful assaults on biodiversity in the next two decades, painting a dismal picture of the future of life, including human life."

The scientists concluded saying, "The resulting biological annihilation obviously will have serious ecological, economic and social consequences. Humanity will eventually pay a very high price for the decimation of the only assemblage of life that we know of in the universe."

Wildlife is swiftly dying out due to habitat destruction, overhunting, toxic pollution, invasion by alien species and climate change. But the ultimate cause of all of these factors is “human overpopulation and continued population growth, and overconsumption, especially by the rich”, say the scientists, who include Prof Paul Ehrlich, at Stanford University in the US.