Shepherds Leading Sheep to Slaughter: The Extinction of Species and the Destruction of Ecosystems

Abstract

T he widespread and catastrophic extinction of species and ecosystems occurring on all continents but especially in regions previously untouched by technology-the tropics and the oceans-is the second concern I wish to discuss. To stop this immense calamity has acquired an urgency absolutely beyond belief. If you pick up Vincenz Ziswiler's Extinct and Vanishing Animals (1967), Fisher, Simon, and Vincent's The Red Book: Wildlife in Danger (1969), or any of the many similar studies you will find pages and pages with nothing but lists of animal species and subspecies close to extinction. Here are some figures for surviving individuals: blue whale (including the pygmy blue whale) about 6,400 in the Antarctic, 1,000 to 2,500 in the North Pacific (Gambell and Brown, 1971); mountain gorilla 1,000 to perhaps 5,000; tamarau (a water buffalo of the Philippines) 200; Florida Key deer 235; giant sable antelope 500; Sumatran rhinoceros 150; Indian rhinoceros 600; Indian tiger 1,700; and on and on into the night of everlasting extinction. Plants are equally vulnerable, and, as a forthcoming book edited by R. Melville of the International Union for the Conservation of Nature and Natural Resources shows, there is no time to lose. Not only are species by the thousands threatened with a fate as irrevocable as that of the marvellous dodo, but whole ecosystems of great ecologic and economic value are being developed-a euphemism for exploitation with hardly a thought to the future.