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Wildlife extinction much closer than we think....

What on earth are we doing on and to this planet of ours? As if climate change hasn't already seen bizarre and altered patterns of weather-conditions all around the globe, serious scientific evidence says our wildlife is being driven to extinction at a rate much faster than originally thought.

The Guardian reports:

"Endangered species may become extinct 100 times faster than previously thought, scientists warned today, in a bleak re-assessment of the threat to global biodiversity.

Writing in the journal Nature, leading ecologists claim that methods used to predict when species will die out are seriously flawed, and dramatically underestimate the speed at which some plants and animals will be wiped out.

The findings suggest that animals such as the western gorilla, the Sumatran tiger and the Malayan sun bear, the smallest of the bear family, may become extinct much sooner than conservationists feared.

Ecologists Brett Melbourne at the University of Colorado at Boulder and Alan Hastings at the University of California, Davis, said conservation organisations should use updated extinction models to urgently re-evaluate the risks to wildlife.

“Some species could have months instead of years left, while other species that haven’t even been identified as under threat yet should be listed as endangered,” said Melbourne."

Clearly a time for a wake up call. Read the full piece here.

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