Humans are destroying plant and animal species at rates so unprecedented that they threaten to wipe out 15 percent to 20 percent of some groups in the foreseeable future.
That report the other day from a United Nations group involving more than 1,000 scientists from 50 countries ought to send the world a pointed wakeup call.Sadly, the warning could be ignored because the environmental movement has damaged its own credibility with a long series of extravagant claims and false alarms in pursuit of extreme remedies.
But the new report deserves to be taken seriously because it is in line with well-documented previous studies showing the rate of extinction among plant and animal species to be only somewhat lower than the levels spelled out by the U.N. team.
Among its many findings, the U.N. report concludes that at least 4,000 plants and 5,400 animals are threatened with extinction and that species have recently become extinct at 50 to 100 times the average expected natural rate.
The survival of species is important for a number of reasons. Though science does not know how much genetic material is enough, it knows we all depend upon genetic diversity to keep crops and herds one step ahead of pests, diseases and droughts. It knows that such diversity plays a role in maintaining air and water quality. And it knows that many species, including some on the endangered list, are a potential source of future medications.
There's some reason to be optimistic. Already a number of endangered species have been brought back from the brink of extinction, including the American bald eagle, the whooping crane, the American alligator, the California gray whale, the California condor and the peregrine falcon. Another 238 species on the endangered list in the United States are now stable or improving.
Clearly, these successes can and must be repeated many more times. For that to happen, environmentalists, farmers and industrialists need to stop treating each other as foes to be defeated but as partners in a common cause. Such unity, in turn, can result only if we all realize that conservation serves not only esthetic and moral purposes but is good business, too. There is far more economic value in the preservation of plant and animal species than in their destruction.