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The Animal Plight (and Perseverance) in Climate Change
Recently, US Fish and Wildlife Service officials declared the extinction of 23 wildlife species — 11 birds, 8 freshwater mussels, 2 fish, a bat, and a plant — closing the chapter on a lengthy, time and money-consuming search for these species. Meanwhile, scientists in Florida are working around the clock to save its reefs from an affliction known as the “stony coral tissue loss disease (SCTLD)”, which had been plaguing its waters since 2014.
These are just a few among possibly countless news localized from the United States alone. While the figures appear minuscule, it’s hard to ignore the obvious fact that these species are being wiped out from existence. Besides, appearances can be deceiving; even the culmination of over 3 billion animals that are dead or displaced in the aftermath of the Australian bushfires in 2020 can be rounded down to a small percentage when, in reality, the actual numbers are far abundant.
Experts estimate that 0.01%-0.1% of all species are likely to go extinct each year, with current conditions perhaps exacerbating the natural/background extinction rate (without human involvement) by a thousand-fold or ten-thousand-fold. So, imagine the figures when human activities do play a role in it.
The declaration of the endangered or extinct status of a species has its caveats…
