This Emperor Has Worn Out His Ragged Clothes

Alarmist Claims on Extinction Can Lead to Apathy


Bob Brockie
Stuff


A new United Nations report on biodiversity, released in May, claims that a million of the world's species are at imminent risk of extinction, while 4000 native plant and animal species also face extinction in New Zealand, according to another recent report.

These claims give the impression that droves of plants and animals are going extinct, but things are not as alarming as these reports assert.   Very few animals have disappeared from the world's continents in recent years.

The International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN) keeps a close eye on extinctions and lists very few animals going extinct on the continents.  Since 2000, the Union lists only the Western black rhino, a Japanese otter, the Yangtze River dolphin, five species of Australian marsupial rodents, and some African grasshoppers.

More island species have gone extinct over the list 18 years, comprising the Formosan leopard, a Christmas Island bat, the Pinta Island tortoise, a Uruguayan island lizard, a Madagascan grebe, a Bermuda owl, the Norfolk Island silvereye, a Costa Rican toad, an Australian island marsupial rat, a giant stick insect from Singapore, and a Madeira island butterfly

Extinction doomsayers have always attracted headlines.
In 2004, an international survey claimed that half the world's animals faced extinction by the year 2050.  In 1995, the renowned American scientist Jared Diamond predicted that half the world's species would be extinct by the time he reached retirement age. However at age 72, Diamond has seen only a handful of animals disappear.  No animal has gone extinct in New Zealand since our bush wren was last seen in 1972. The last native plant to go extinct here was Adams mistletoe in 1954.

Over the last 50 years, the world's conservation efforts have ramped up immensely. Globally, IUCN incorporates more than 1200 member organisations, and the World Wildlife Fund for Nature supports more than 1300 conservation or environmental projects.

UNESCO, the International Convention on Biological Diversity, the Conservation of International Trade in Endangered Species organisation, Birdlife International, the Alliance for Zero Extinctions, and thousands of lesser organisations, volunteers, and philanthropists fight extinction at every turn.

As an example of personal private involvement, charitable Americans bequeathed or donated more than  $7 billion to environmental and animal conservation organisations last year. A wide range of new techniques have also come on stream over the last 20 years, helping to hold extinctions at bay. 

New Zealand can be proud of its efforts to fight extinctions. Thanks to government and private efforts, and the heroic work of an army of volunteers, New Zealand has not lost a single species for 45 years.   With more money, new methods, and astute planning going into conservation, there is every prospect of our dwindling populations being saved from extinction over the next 50 years.

Repeated exaggerated claims that hundreds of species are on the verge of extinction are unnecessarily alarmist and likely to lead to apathy.  That animal numbers are declining drastically should be motivation enough for conservationists.