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RE: There are now over 1,000 mountain gorillas (Gorilla beringei beringei) in the wild for the first time in half a century
Do you not think that we must accept that some species will become extinct due to natural selection, and within that, and sadly, due to humans part in the natural world?
The whole natural world is driven by the food chain which of course we sit atop, also giving us responsibility for what goes on below us, but how much should we be protecting our own species as a priority ?
Its all a difficult balancing act especially as 1st world citizens who have what we have through aggressive industrialisation and now preaching conservation to people with almost nothing.
That's an interesting question. There are surely some species that will go extinct due to natural causes, and this is known as the background extinction rate. There are a lot of debate as to which number is the correct one, but here are some numbers that can be used. As you can see, the numbers are generally low, such as if we had 1 million mammals, one would go extinct each year. However, we only have around 6,500 species, so we should theoretically only see one of them go extinct every 150 years or so.
The point I'm trying to make is that the real natural extinction rate is very, very low, so we should absolutely do our best to prevent the extinction of these animals. At least that's my opinion :)
I agree, we nees to protect our natural world. There was an interesting article on BBC today about endangered mammels in UK. Very sad as its not like we have much wild life here to lose. Red Squirrels were mentioned and we ve been fighting to save them for years after the imported grey squirrels took over.
Wow, I had no idea that grey squirrel is taking over for red squirrels in the UK! That's actually pretty crazy. At least they are abundant in most other parts of Europe, so there's always the possibility of reintroducing them if they are unable to save them in the first place.