Waldrapps (Photo : REUTERS/YURIKO NAKAO)
New study discovered that animal and plant species around the globe are dying at alarming rates because the planet is now entering the sixth mass extinction.
Researchers are calling different sectors to start the conservation of remaining threatened species, populations and habitat, however, the chance of doing so is rapidly ending.
Co-author Anthony Barnosky from the University of California at Berkeley said that it may be the last chance of conserving the Earth’s species because the speed of disappearance is too fast. Lead author Gerardo Ceballos also explained that the sixth mass extinction is quite sudden and it happens globally, Discovery News reported.
One good sample was the extinction of Pinta Island tortoise named Lonesome George that died on June 24, 2012 without giving birth to any offspring. In the last century, there have been vertebrate species that died up to 114 times faster than they would have without human activity.
In a more detailed explanation, the extinct species in the past 100 years would take 11,400 years to disappear under natural extinction rates.
The massive extinction is caused by human activities, leading to pollution, habitat loss, beginning of invasive species and increased carbon emissions that drive climate change and ocean acidification, as per Yahoo News report.
The study has used a wide array of fossil record to calculate to estimate both the current extinction rate and the background rate. The background rate is the rate at which species can be expected to regularly expire.
Currently, the extinction rate has different rise rate in the number of extinctions due to the external factors such as habitat loss and climate change.
The latest study proves that there are evidences pointing that human induced mass extinction now coming at a faster rate.
