question about extinction

[achmeineye]

I was just curious as to the rate that species of insects go extinct. I know that it would be near impossible to give an exact rate, but what is an estimate? There are so many different species that it must occur quite often. Just something I've always wondered about.

In 500 years, do you think there won't be all that many different kinds of insects left?

[bluemoth]

Well from what I have herd a 100 species of living things gos extinct each year. With humans now at 7 billion on the planet and growing the number of extinctions will increase no doubt. All the typical things that go along with a growing human population will cause more habitat loss - deforestation, bulldozing untouched land to build more houses, towns, cities and roads. Lots more pollution to. Although we think we are getting a less polluted environment from enforcing pollution standards the increase of cars and industry needed for growing populations may make it worse. As for living creatures they will often be forgotten as so many times folks want to make money in construction or some other biasness in stead of saving a few accors of pristine butterfly habitat. Read a story once about such a place. A biasness man took lunch brakes out side next to an empty plot of land full of weeds. As weeks passed he became more interested in the wide verity of butterflies fling there that he had never payed attention to before. Then one day he found this butterfly Paradise torn up by bulldozers for construction of a new biasness. Very sad indeed. I do believe extinctions well increase in numbers as humanity takes over this planet. Yes if the planet continues the way it is now there will be many less species in 500 years.

[achmeineye]

That makes me sad. I understand that extinction is just a part of evolution, but I still get sort of choked up to think about what we are doing to our home.

[starlightcriminal]

I bet the rate is even faster than that. It is tragic. Always advocate habitat protection when you can, it's the best hope we have for saving the world's organisms (and the reason why most "protection" measures don't really work- most of the time we protect the animal, not the habitat it requires to survive).

[jackblack]

You are thinking too far ahead , worry about today and what you can do about habitat protection now if it makes you sad thinking about the future that far ahead .
We will all be dead and gone long before then anyway .
Maybe humans will disappear like the dinosaurs did long ago and the world can revert to normality ?

[wollastoni]

Just an example from my last trip to Papua. In cultivated area of the Baliem Valley, we found between 3 and 5 Delias species per day. In primeforests of the same Baliem valley, we found more than 20 Delias species per day.

As human population will keep on growing and human will keep on consuming more and more, let's say 80% of butterfly species should rarify in the next century... and many of them will disappear. I have read that butterflies declined from about 50% in the UK in the last century...

[starlightcriminal]

There's your argument against "local" farming too. It is much better to farm hydroponically, in plant condos like chickens (yes it's unpleasant, but better than acres and acres of chickens), than it is to have every family in every town using up all the available land to farm because they *think* it's more environmentally friendly than having one highly efficient farm making tons of produce for a bunch of towns. Agrarian societies are not idyllic, it's a western myth. They are ground zero for mass extinction. The rate at which we lose forests is directly correlated with the rate at which species disappear.

[starlightcriminal]

Oh, and I forgot to even bring up water use.