Speech - Oliver Fister

The Earth’s Sixth Mass Extinction - And It’s Our Fault

Oliver Fister

With life, begets death. Anything that lives will eventually die; there are no exceptions, for both individuals and species. Typically, over about 10 million years, a species will emerge, live, and eventually die off. According to paleontology, this is a regularly occurring event in Earth’s history; over 99% of species that have ever lived are now extinct. But extinctions can also happen in clusters, where large percentages of the Earth’s life are wiped out in a very short amount of time. Science currently recognizes five of these “mass extinctions”:

• One 450 million years ago, killing 85% of life,
• 375 million years, 50%,
• 250 million years, 90%,
• 200 million years ago, 40%,
• And the last one was 65 million years ago, which killed off 75%, including the non-avian dinosaurs.

These events are usually imagined as apocalyptic events, where huge amounts of animals and plants are burned up or choked out of existence almost instantaneously. The general consensus about the poor dinosaurs’ fate is that their demise was triggered by an enormous meteor slamming into Mexico, an impact with the force of a million nuclear bombs, sending out tidal waves the world over blocking out the sun with smoke for hundreds of years. So, it’s pretty hard to imagine that a mass extinction could actually be happening right under our noses. *pause* Unfortunately, that’s exactly what’s happening.

In recent years, a new, sixth, mass extinction has become widely recognized by the scientific community. This is called the Holocene Extinction, and it’s happening, right now, as I speak. Biodiversity experts widely agree that the current rate of extinction is about 1000% times the usual background rate, and is expected to climb. About 1000 recorded species have died out in the past 500 years, not including the estimated thousands more that died before scientists could discover them. One estimation sets that 30 to 50% of all species could be extinct or endangered by mid-century.

The underlying cause for this new mass extinction probably isn’t very surprising: it’s human activity. To be fair, in some cases, animals are dying off on their own; for example, one type of fungus has caused amphibian populations to plummet worldwide; but we’ve established our species as an unprecedented kind of global apex predator, consuming mass amounts of resources and leaving little but wasteland behind. Jungles are being mowed down for wood, coral reefs are being destroyed by pollution, and the African savannas are terrorized by poachers. As humans exploit and ravage each environment, they are destroying the creatures that depend on it as well.

But as it turns out, the same species that has destroyed so much life also has the power to bring it back.

Since their endangerment, many species have been taken off of the “endangered” list of the IUCN, or International Union for Conservation of Nature, the worldwide authority on wildlife conservation. For example, anti-poaching efforts have recovered the Southern white rhinoceros from only 20 recorded individuals in the early 20th century to over 20,000 wild members today. The giant panda, which has long been a symbol of wildlife conservation, was bumped off the list in 2016. The bald eagle, which dropped from half a million individuals in the 1700s to roughly 800 in the 50s, has bounced back to about 70,000, mostly due to anti-hunting legislation. All three of these success stories have one thing in common - government protected lands. Large areas of land are protected by governments to protect certain species and environments, and this action is often prompted by international concern. According to Richard Leakey, the IUCN's conservation expert of African animals, such as the endangered giraffe and the vulnerable zebra: “National parks and national forests are surely where our greatest effort must be concentrated.” It is possible to save a species before it is too late. But it requires work - both by the government and by the people who these animals live alongside.

So we can save animals that still walk the Earth today, but what about creatures that are already gone? New science suggests a new, novel way to recover these as well. It’s cloning. Some enthusiastic practitioners call it de-extinction. Recent strides in gene sequencing means that we can collect the genetic code from remains of long-dead animals. While we won’t see a real-life Jurassic Park any time soon, animal remains 4 million years old or younger, like the woolly mammoth, the dodo, and the passenger pigeon, still have viable DNA, and can have their genomes reconstructed. From there, we can artificially fertilize egg cells of related species and have it give birth to a live clone. One species has already become “de-extinct” in this way: the Pyrenean Ibex, a goat-like creature extinct since 2000, was successfully cloned and born in 2003. Unfortunately, the clone died seven minutes after birth due to lung defects. While the technology might not be perfect yet, the Pyrenean Ibex project shows us great prospects for the future.

In summary, land protection: good. Anti-hunting and anti-poaching legislation is good. Cloning efforts, while in their early stages, are also good. But one thing is clear - whatever we do, we must recognize our massive effect on the creatures we share our Earth with, and do everything we can to fix our mistakes.