Are We Close to the Sixth Mass Extinction?
3 Min Read
Human activity in the last 100 years has extremely heightened this possibility.
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Polar bears could go extinct in less than a century due to climate change
Mass extinction is closer than we think.
With over 135,000 species registered thus far over the course of 50 years by the IUCN (International Union for the Conservation of Nature), 28% of them are threatened with complete extinction if no measures are taken to prevent it.
The Union is about to release its updated version of the Red List of Threatened Species, a catalog detailing the various animal and plant species threatened by extinction due to human activity.
With the threat of climate change and its repercussions looming larger than ever, the world needs to move quickly if we hope to halt the sixth mass extinction.
Sixth Mass Extinction
The real question on everyone’s mind is the following: Are we on the brink of the sixth mass extinction?
Craig Hilton-Taylor boldly answers this question. As the IUCN's Head of Red List Unit, he is well aware of the challenges diverse species are facing in this day and age: “If we look at extinctions every 100 years since 1500, there is a marked inflection starting in the 1900s. The trend is showing that we are 100 to 1,000 times higher than the 'background', or normal, extinction rates.”
Lions are the most sociable of the cats and survive in very arid environments. Despite being apex predators, lion populations declined by over 40% between 1993 and 2014. On #WorldLionDay, learn about their #conservation: https://t.co/MdXrgFXsJT pic.twitter.com/pmoqmOO3Yx
— IUCN Red List (@IUCNRedList) August 10, 2021
If this issue is not addressed, a major crisis is imminent said the researcher, adding that:
"The red list status shows that we're on the cusp of the sixth extinction event [in the last 500 million years]."
On the Dangers of Climate Change
Citing the direct link between global warming and the possible extinction of polar bears due to the melting of ice caps, Hilton-Taylor described it as “obvious” all while questioning other claims: “With other megafauna it's a lot harder to detect the impacts of climate change.”
In regards to the recent increase of wildfires caused by global warming, he asserted the causality linking the two, although "when experts record threats to a species they may put 'increased fire frequency', not climate change."
Matters of technicalities aid the researchers at the IUCN to further clarify the extinction pattern, while the policies that should be implemented must take into consideration the entirety of the threat’s spectrum and not just point at categorizations in an attempt to circumvent accountability.
