6 October 2008

Going

...the number of threatened mammals could be as high as 36 percent.
-- Jan Schipper with IUCN. See Redlist.
While the Red List does make headlines, somehow the irreplaceable loss of species does not stay in the minds of the general public, and it has certainly never prompted major financial investments. This has always puzzled me. As a colleague of mine puts it: "Imagine what would happen to us if rainfall was a thousand times more than normal? What if snowfall were a thousand times more than normal? What if rates of disease transmission for malaria or HIV/AIDS were a thousand times higher than they are now? That is what is happening to plant and animal biodiversity today."
-- Russell Mittermeier

P.S. 10 Oct: Here's the article from Science.

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