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During the more than 4.5 billion years of Earth’s history, there has never been a richness of life comparable to that which exists today. Although there have been five mass extinction episodes during the last 450 million years, each destroying 70 to 95% of the species of plants, animals, and microorganisms that existed earlier, life has recovered and multiplied extensively. Those extinction events were caused by catastrophic alterations of the environment, such as massive volcanic eruptions, depletion of oceanic oxygen, or collision with an asteroid. In each case, it took millions of years to regain numbers of species comparable to those that existed before the particular extinction event.
Life has now entered a sixth mass extinction or mass extermination by humans. This is the most serious environmental problem of our time along with climate change both simply created by humans. More than 400 vertebrate species became extinct in the last 100 years, extinctions that would have taken up to 10,000 years in the normal course of evolution. Millions of populations have vanished in the last 100 years, with most people unaware of their loss; such losses have become extremely severe in the last few decades in every part of the world including in the United States, China, Europe, Indonesia, and Brazil. For example, in a sample of 177 species of large mammals, most lost more than 80% of their geographic range in the last century. Alarmingly, 60% of primate species are now threatened with extinction and 75% have serious declining populations. This situation is the result of escalating anthropogenic pressures on wild animals and their habitats.
Governments ignore species extinction, but not Endangered Species International (ESI)
The extinction crisis, like the pollution and climate crises to which it is tied, poses an existential threat to civilization. Although it is more immediate than climate disruption, its magnitude and likely impacts on human well-being are largely unknown and ignored by governments, the private sector, and civil society. It is, therefore, a scientific and moral imperative for all of us to take whatever actions we can to stop extinction.
While our societies spend $1.8 trillion per year (2008) to make arms to kill, protecting the world's most endangered species from extinction and conserving their beautiful habitats would cost only $76 billion per year. Currently, governments spend only a fraction of this crucial spending. The United Sates spends only $7 billion per year on this crisis, and countries with more biodiversity and large number of threatened species spend very little. Brazil is home to 13% of all life on Earth, but its conservation budget is merely $180M. Congo is home of 12% percent of all life on Earth, and spends less than $0.5M for conservation. Your support to ESI conservation work in the tropics is therefore more important than ever. Every dollar counts and makes a difference.
We need people like you to come together from all over the planet to save life. One way is to continuously support effective groups like us which actively protect rainforests, coral reefs, deep ocean, and many threatened species. With your monthly support we will sustain our strong effort to stop species extinction and protected wilderness. With your generous help, we can continue supporting the creation of protected areas where it is urgently needed (e.g., ocean, rainforests, critical habitats for endangered species worldwide) which protect and restore millions of animal and plant species and their populations. Protected areas have also multiple economic benefits, including nature tourism income, the provision of clinics, education and other forms of support to local communities, improved health outcomes, and avoidance of catastrophic losses due to the degradation of nature. ESI acts now and every day to save life in earth. Join us.
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